Neonatal Pain: Perceptions and Current Practice.
Mallory Perry, Zewen Tan, Jie Chen and 3 others
PMID 30447813WHAT IT FOUND
Neonatal pain is under-treated and inconsistently managed.
Nurses are central to assessment and prevention, and the review recommends routine pain scales, limited painful procedures, and combined non-drug comfort measures such as kangaroo care.
Key findings
01Only half of painful procedures performed in neonates were treated, with wide variation in pain management.
02The review recommends daily assessment with validated pain scales and combining non-pharmacological comfort strategies.
03NICU nurses reported barriers including unclear protocols, lack of time and knowledge, and distrust of pain tools.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is not a systematic review or meta-analysis, so it does not report a formal search, quality appraisal, or pooled effect estimates. Recommendations are synthesized from existing literature and may not apply to every neonatal unit. Some intervention statements summarize multiple studies without specifying populations, doses, or outcomes. Nurse perception findings come from surveys in different countries and may not reflect local practice.
Declared interests
The authors have nothing to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that oral sucrose is safe for repeated painful procedures. The review notes that daily repeated use in very young preterm infants may lead to poor neurologic development.