Asessing and managing pain in children who have complex needs
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How do parents and healthcare practitioners acquire and develop knowledge and skills to assess and manage pain in children who have complex needs?
IRAS ID
144369
Contact name
Bernie Carter
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Research summary
Children with complex needs experience an increased number of pain episodes. Identifying and responding to these pain episodes is complicated by the child’s cognitive and communication impairment. Providing support and training for parents to manage their child’s pain is an important aspect of improving the management of pain in children with complex needs.
Aims:
1. To inform strategies to support parents and healthcare practitioners in managing pain in children with complex needs.
2. To inform a further project (subject to further funding) to develop a paediatric pain e-resource for children with complex needs.
We will recruit two groups of participants: 1) parents of a child who has both complex needs and who also experiences pain, and 2) healthcare practitioners who care for this patient group.
We will adopt a mixed method approach. We will use 8 weekly telephone surveys with parents taking part in the study to collate a pain profile of their child who has complex needs. Demographic data will be obtained from parents. We will analyse these data using univariate analysis to provide descriptive statistics. We will also conduct 2 audio recorded semi structured interviews with parents. We will conduct 1 audio recorded semi structured interview with healthcare practitioners in our sample. Interviews will be guided by a prompt guide, transcribed verbatim and analysed using narrative and thematic analysis techniques. We will analyse each participant’s data independently before integrating these data with the survey data and then analysing all data collectively.
Relevant ethics and R & D approval will be obtained before the study begins. Participants will be recruited via Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and informed written consent will be obtained from participants. Interviews will be conducted by appropriately trained and experienced researchers and data collection and storage will comply with relevant data protection legislation and University of Central Lancashire guidelines.REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/NW/0106
Date of REC Opinion
7 Mar 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion