Promoting Paediatric Pain Management

Thank you all for your ongoing support to promote paediatric pain management. We have been delighted to be able to continue teaching on pain management in children’s palliative care since our last report. We ran an online training on children’s palliative for clinicians in Iraq for the WHO. It was a great experience and we were able to discuss some of the challenges in assessing and managing pain in children, particularly within contexts such as in Iraq. We are now discussing options for ongoing support for the team in Iraq. Other aspects of pain management we are working on is with regards to best practice guidelines and potential priorities for research in pain management. 

It is great to be part of a global network committed to children’s palliative care, some of whom we met when we were in India recently at the Indian Association of Palliative Care congress (IAPCON 23). Prior to the conference we helped organise a pre-conference workshop on children’s palliative care in children with non-oncological conditions, with the management of pain and other symptoms for children with neurological conditions, complex heart disease and HIV/AIDS. One of the great things about these workshops is how much we learn from each other and it was a great opportunity of sharing and so good to be back in India after the pandemic. We also had the opportunity to do some training in Ghana in January and to advocate for access to childrens palliative care and pain management. 

Our elearning programmes, including the one on pain management continue to be accessed by people around the world with over 8,000 people having accessed our courses from 191 countries. We continue to develop the courses, which are now available in a wide range of languages.  

Alongside this, ICPCN are in the process of rebranding and launching a new website, which we hope to do in the next few weeks, so please do look out for thus, and information about our pain app can be found on the new website. 

Thank you again for your continued support.

Thank you all for your ongoing support to promote paediatric pain management. We have been delighted to be able to continue teaching on pain management in children’s palliative care since our last report. As we mentioned, we attended the EPEC Paediatric Become an EPEC-Pediatrics Trainer Conference and EPEC-Paediatrics Professional Development Workshop in San Francisco in July, so that are able to support the running of the EPEC courses alongside St Jude’s and others form the EPEC team. This was a great opportunity to attend the programme and now means that ICPCN are able to support the delivery of EPEC Pediatric courses.

A combined EPEC (Education in Palliative and End-of-Life Care) Paediatrics End User and Leadership Workshop was held prior to the 7th International African Palliative Care Conference in Kampala, Uganda. The workshop was held at the Mestil Hotel Kampala and was attended by 55 participants from Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The workshop was run by the African Palliative Care Association (APCA), International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN) and the St Jude Global Palliative Care Program, and was funded by St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. 34 participants undertook the end-user EPEC workshop including doctors, clinical officers, nurses, pharmacists and social workers. The majority (21) were from Uganda, from a range of organisations including: Kawempe Home Care, the Uganda Heart Institute, the Uganda Cancer Institute, Kirrudu National Referral Hospital, St Francis Hospital Nsambya, Mulago National Referral Hospital, Yumbe Regional Referral Hospital, Mildmay Uganda, Mbarara University, and the International Rescue Committee. A further 21 participants undertook the leadership workshop which was run concurrently with the EPEC workshop. The groups participated in several combined sessions as well. The workshop went well and we are in the process of writing up the report for publication.

Both Julia and Alex then attended another EPEC Programme and Paediatric Palliative Care Oncology Symposium at St Jude’s in Memphis, with Julia supporting the facilitation of the programme and Alex undertaking the course. It was exciting to be with 43 participants from around the world, to share experiences and to learn from each other. Training has continued on paediatric palliative care, including pain management for participants from Uganda, and also Iraq, along with participants from around the world attending our series of monthly webinars, and undertaking our elearning programmes.

There continue to be many new and exciting opportunities ahead of us and we look forward to collaborating with many of you as we seek to improve access to children’s palliative care and pain management around the world.

Thank you all for your ongoing support to promote paediatric pain management. We were really excited to run a one day workshop on children’s palliative care, which included pain management at the SIOP African conference in Kampala, Uganda on the 16th March 2022. The workshop was held to introduce participants to the principles and practices of children’s palliative care and its integration into the management of children with cancer. A range of topics were discussed and the sessions were facilitated by experienced facilitators from the International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN),  the Palliative care Education and Research Consortium (PcERC) and World Child Cancer (WCC). Over 80 nurses from a range of countries including Uganda, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Cameroon, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and South Sudan attended the session held at the Serena Hotel, Kampala. Uganda. The presentations from the workshop can be accessed here. The workshop was made possible by the Burdett Trust for Nurses through a grant to the Global Health Academy at the University of Edinburgh.

We are also attending the EPEC Paediatric Become and EPEC-Pediatrics Trainer Conference and EPEC-Paediatrics Professional Development Workshop in San Francisco next week, so that we will be able to support the running of the EPEC courses alongside St Jude’s and others form the EPEC team. The first of these workshops will be in August prior to the APCA palliative care conference. 

We have continued to be involved in a range of webinars, providing education and information on children’s palliative care and in particular pain management for individuals from around the world. We are also working with several organisations across the UK and Europe looking at the use of a children’s palliative outcome scale with the assessment of pain being a core component of this. We have also been working with colleagues in South Africa to develop a project on paediatric pain management and are currently awaiting news on our funding applications. So there is a lot happening.

There are many new and exciting opportunities ahead of us and we look forward to collaborating with many of you as we seek to improve access to children’s palliative care and pain management around the world. 

Thank you all for your ongoing support to promote paediatric pain management. The challenge of pain management in children’s palliative care remains an ongoing issue, and high on the agenda of many. Our work continues on the best practice guidelines linked to the revised WHO pain guidelines, and we are currently collating resources from around the world and developing a survey to go out to our members to review what medications are available in which countries. We are excited to be continuing this work along with getting together a team interested in research to look at a strategy for research into pain in children’s palliative care globally.  

We have continued to be involved in a range of webinars, providing education and information on children’s palliative care and in particular pain management for individuals from around the world. In January our webinar on pain assessment and management was very popular with 500 people from around the world registering and either joining us live or watching the recording at a later date. This demonstrates the ongoing need for sessions such as this one and for capacity building in pain assessment and management. We are also working with several organisations across the UK and Europe looking at the use of a children’s palliative outcome scale with the assessment of pain being a core component of this. Later in March we are also running a workshop on children’s palliative care, including pain assessment and management for nurses at the SIOP Africa conference in Kampala – it is our first face-to-face workshop since the start of the pandemic and we are looking forward to it.

Despite the ongoing challenges of covid, there continue to be many new and exciting opportunities ahead of us and we look forward to collaborating with many of you as we seek to improve access to children’s palliative care and pain management around the world. 

Thank you all for your ongoing support to promote paediatric pain management. Whilst the world continues to be dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue of pain management remains high on the agenda of many, as the care of children in pain continues to be challenging, with the need for education greater than ever. We have begun work this month on the best practice guidelines linked to the revised WHO pain guidelines, and will be working on the research strategy in the New Year. Alongside this we have been able to support some participants, with St Jude’s, to undertake the EPEC paediatrics course which was run by the Maruza Foundation and we are looking forward to hearing how the course has impacted on the care that they provide, particularly in relation to pain management. 

We have continued to be involved in a range of webinars, providing education and information on children’s palliative care and in particular pain management for individuals from around the world. We have started our webinar series based around the book that we edited: Children’s Palliative Care: An International Case-Based Manual. The webinars take place on the third Thursday of each month and in December we hope to focus on pain assessment and management and are looking forward to the discussion and input from around the world. Last month we took part in the EAPC conference on palliative care, and helped to facilitate a pre-conference workshop with the WHO, where we specifically looked at the revised pain guidelines and how these are being utilised in different contexts. 

There continue to be many new and exciting opportunities ahead of us and look forward to collaborating with many of you as we seek to improve access to children’s palliative care and pain management around the world.