Promoting Paediatric Pain Management

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 continue to go through each of our elearning courses updating them. The revised WHO pain guidelines were launched in February 2021 and we are looking at our course on pain assessment and management for children in light of these. We will also be doing some further work on defining global best practice guidelines and looking at issues around research in pain in children’s palliative care. Both of which will feed into our existing work on pain in children’s palliative care. (You can see the ICPCNs statement re the Pain Guidleines here)

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. Just this week we are supporting the second part of virtual training in children’s palliative care taking place in Uganda, with issues of pain assessment and management being covered in the first week of the training. Training virtually is a skill that we are all having to learn, and whilst it remains challenging, we are beginning to get used to it and wondering how hybrid programmes will work in the future. We have also taken part in the WHOs Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer with the team being involved in a variety of WHO led webinars across the world. Our series of ICPCN led webinars will be launched in the next couple of months, with a session in pain assessment and management high on the priority list. We do also continue to hear stories about how individuals are utilising our Pain App in their day-to-day work, and are learning how to assess and manage pain in children. This is encouraging and great to know that the App is being used and is helpful.

So, whilst we may not have been able to do what we had planned in relation to education and training, our App and clinical care. It has been exciting to look at the new and different opportunities ahead of us and we look forward to the ongoing work that ICPCN is involved in with regards to children’s pain assessment and management and look forward to collaborating with many of you on this.