Pediatric Pain Awareness Month Conducted for the First Time in the Gulf region
Doha, 18 November 2012: Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) is conducting Pediatric
Pain Awareness Month for the first time in the Gulf region in order to raise staff and public
awareness and enhance pain management for infants, children and adolescents. The
Children’s Hospital Project team at HMC is leading this major initiative as part of HMC’s
partnership with SickKids Hospital Canada.
The event builds on Qatar’s capacity to keep pace with global strategies for the
management of pain in infants, children and adolescents. As part of the awareness
campaign, educational workshops are being conducted to enhance the knowledge of 240
healthcare professionals in using evidence-based tools to assess and manage pain in
children. Public educational activities will also be conducted in HMC hospitals, as well as
through newspaper and television broadcasts. A Pain Awareness symposium will be held
later this month to close the event.
Speaking on the program for Pain Awareness Month, Dr Abdulla Al Kaabi, Project Director
for the Children’s Hospital Project said, “We have been working for many years with
SickKids to improve the level of care that children in Qatar receive, part of which is pain
management in children from birth until adolescence. We started this campaign to raise
the level of awareness among healthcare staff as well as families about recognizing and
managing pain in children of different ages.”
Dr Al Kaabi explained, “It can be challenging to recognize pain in young children, and pain
is sometimes underestimated by people. Awareness is always the first step – if we cannot
recognize it, we cannot treat it or refer it to the right people. We are involving people from
different disciplines in this course to make sure that multidisciplinary teams who care for
children use the best available methods to assess and manage pain. We are also aiming to
educate families so that they know how to recognize pain in children, especially in babies
who cannot talk to express their pain.”
“Being aware of pain in children can also improve the outcome of treatment. For example,
when a child experiences pain after an operation and this is not properly managed, it can
affect the success of the operation and can cause complications in the form of infection. This
can be easily avoided if there is proper management from the beginning, and the patient’s
treatment will have a better outcome,” Dr Mansour Ahmed Ali, Head of Pediatric Surgery at
HMC added.
Dr Mohammed Janahi, Chairman of Pediatrics at HMC said pediatric specialists are
participating along with other healthcare professionals in the workshops to enhance their
knowledge on assessing and managing pain in their patients.
Pointing out that the campaign is part of efforts to change the culture of pain being
suppressed, Dr Janahi said, “In our culture men and boys are discouraged from complaining
if they are feeling any pain, but this is not right because we need to be aware if children are
feeling pain. The purpose of holding Pain Awareness Month is to educate our people that
children should be encouraged to express their pain, and people who are caring for children
should not ignore this, as it could indicate a serious condition which we can better diagnose
if we are aware of the pain that the child is feeling.”
ILQ NEWS
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