PEDIATRICS Vol. 122 Supplement November 2008, pp. S154-S160 (doi:10.1542/10.1542/peds.2008-1055h)
SUPPLEMENT ARTICLE |
From the Ouchless Place to Comfort Central: The Evolution of a Concept
Department of Pediatrics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut; Pain Relief Program, Connecticut Children's Medical Center, Hartford, Connecticut
Although the past 20 years have yielded an outpouring of research on pain management in children, this information is often not applied uniformly to children in the hospital. To address this deficiency, we developed a systematic institution-wide program to reduce pain in all children in the hospital. Our goal was to create a setting in which attention to pain control and comfort measures would be inherent in all inpatient encounters. We labeled the inpatient unit in which this concept evolved as the "Ouchless Place" and described the program and its development in a 1997 Pediatrics article. In this article we describe the further evolution of that concept in light of the broader changes that have occurred in the field of pain management and in our community. The development of a new children's hospital allowed us to examine what we had learned from our previous experience and modify our program on the basis of that review. This new initiative was renamed "Comfort Central," recognizing that although no inpatient experience could be entirely "ouchless," we could still pledge to families that we were attentive to pain and would provide the most comfort that we could. Specific changes that were put in place in our model included the acquisition of administrative authority to mandate change; the extension of our program to the laboratory, outpatient clinics, and physician offices; the incorporation of newer, more active educational models; increased emphasis on collaboration with other services; increased visibility of pain-relief efforts; and development of an ongoing quality improvement program that monitors the efficacy of pain-relief initiatives in the institution. The elements of this program may be applicable to other health care systems that desire to develop a more cohesive system-wide approach to pain reduction in those for whom they provide care.
Key Words: pain • anesthetics • analgesics • institutional management teams • outcome assessment • health care quality • access • and evaluation
Abbreviations: JCAHO—Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Heathcare Organizations
Accepted Jun 4, 2008.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Facebook 
Reddit 
Technorati 
Twitter What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  W. T. Zempsky Optimizing the Management of Peripheral Venous Access Pain in Children: Evidence, Impact, and Implementation Pediatrics, November 1, 2008; 122(Supplement_3): S121 - S124. [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
