摘要：Background. Despite pain being a crucial aspect of urgent-emergency care, the attentionof healthcare workers towards this symptom in the Emergency Department (ED) isstill inadequate. The aims of this study were to assess children’s and their adults accompanier’ssatisfaction regarding pain management in Italian ED, considering healthcareworkers’ attention to the symptom as well as the appropriateness and efficacy of treatmentsreceived.Methods. Questionnaires were administered face-to-face by trained interviewers overthe period of one weekend in 29 Italian ED. The questionnaires were addressed to children3-16 years old, assigned a green code at triage, and their adult accompaniers.Results. Overall, 1581 questionnaires were administered (923 to parents or caregivers,658 to children). The reported level of attention to pain by the care team was high(57.20%) as was the adults’ satisfaction with the pain management (95.01%); a high levelof satisfaction was related to the healthcare workers’ attention to pain. According to theadults, 73.56% of the healthcare professionals collected accurate information about pain;this was confirmed by the children. Pain was managed by a doctor-and-nurse team inless than half the cases (43.77%). Therapy efficacy was reportedly poor: only 14.01% ofchildren were pain-free when leaving the ED.Conclusions. Despite increasing understanding of pain and the availability of guidelinesand effective analgesics, efficient pain relief in paediatric patients in the ED remains anunfulfilled goal: half of children with pain did not receive any treatments. Therefore thequality of pain management in the ED needs to be improved.
