Parent’s Perceptions of Analgesic Administration for Children’s Pain
Mentor 1
W. Hobart Davies
Start Date
16-4-2021 12:00 AM
Description
All children will at some point experience acute pain, making the treatment of pain a pivotal point in pediatric patient care. The opioid crisis brought attention to the dangers of the misuse of narcotic pain medication and created misconceptions endorsed by parents regarding the analgesic treatment of children’s pain. Previous research conducted in our lab to investigate how parents perceived opioid administration to treat their children’s pain from 2007 to 2009 found that parents were uncertain of the safety of analgesics (Gorodzinsky et al., 2012). There is a lack of guidelines from the CDC instructing parents on when to administer opioids to treat children’s chronic pain, with parents reporting a lack of knowledge of analgesics and their side effects. Our current research hopes to answer the questions of how parents have changed their beliefs regarding child pain medication and how parent’s beliefs about administering analgesics to treat children’s pain have changed during the opioid crisis. Participants will be recruited by students enrolled in an advanced psychology laboratory class. Those parents included in the study will complete a survey that will be distributed in the summer or fall of 2021. It is hypothesized that parents will continue to be concerned regarding the safety of analgesic administration. The results of this study will provide insight to the medical community on how to educate parents on analgesic administration to their children, allowing for improvements to be made in the management of pediatric pain.
Parent’s Perceptions of Analgesic Administration for Children’s Pain
All children will at some point experience acute pain, making the treatment of pain a pivotal point in pediatric patient care. The opioid crisis brought attention to the dangers of the misuse of narcotic pain medication and created misconceptions endorsed by parents regarding the analgesic treatment of children’s pain. Previous research conducted in our lab to investigate how parents perceived opioid administration to treat their children’s pain from 2007 to 2009 found that parents were uncertain of the safety of analgesics (Gorodzinsky et al., 2012). There is a lack of guidelines from the CDC instructing parents on when to administer opioids to treat children’s chronic pain, with parents reporting a lack of knowledge of analgesics and their side effects. Our current research hopes to answer the questions of how parents have changed their beliefs regarding child pain medication and how parent’s beliefs about administering analgesics to treat children’s pain have changed during the opioid crisis. Participants will be recruited by students enrolled in an advanced psychology laboratory class. Those parents included in the study will complete a survey that will be distributed in the summer or fall of 2021. It is hypothesized that parents will continue to be concerned regarding the safety of analgesic administration. The results of this study will provide insight to the medical community on how to educate parents on analgesic administration to their children, allowing for improvements to be made in the management of pediatric pain.
