Pain

Our young patients may experience various kinds of pain to which we should pay close attention to provide the best possible support:   

• acute pain (following a trauma or illness, for example) 
• pain associated with the treatment (for example when treating a wound or venipuncture).  
• post-operative pain  
• chronic pain  (persistent pain lasting several months, sometimes associated with a chronic disease or situations of handicap)  

Our mission is to provide the children with the best possible comfort within the hospital by:   

• Helping care staff to recognise the symptoms of pain even in very young children or those unable to express themselves verbally.   
• Proposing means of preventing the pain and the anxiety that can sometimes accompany the care  
• Relieving the pain  

Preventing and relieving pain requires multimodal approaches including pharmacological means (anaesthetising creams, EMONO, antalgic medicines) and non-pharmacological means (reassuring environment, distractions, relaxation, virtual reality, etc.).   

It is also particularly important for the child and his or her parents to be actors in the pain management. 

Chronic pain in children  

When the pain lasts for several months or reappears regularly, it is important to assess the problem by means of a biopsychosocial approach by a multidisciplinary team.  

Various factors can contribute to the chronic pain:    

BIO: underlying chronic disease, tissue lesions, traumas, post-operative events, sleeping problems, etc.   

PSYCHO: anxiety, avoiding behaviour, melancholy, sense of solitude, parental distress, etc.   

SOCIAL:  school absenteeism, isolation, social problems, etc.   

Our team consists of several paediatricians, a doctor of physical medicine, a child psychiatrist, two psychologists and a nurse. They are always ready to listen and to seek the solutions that best meet your expectations.    

We propose an individualised programme for children and their families.   

The programme for all new patients is as follows : 

• Before the consultation: you receive questionnaires (child and parents) that we ask you to fill out. 
• Your questionnaires are discussed in a team so that we can adjust our choice of professionals who will treat your child   
• Our secretariat will then suggest a series of consultations enabling us to assess your child's needs.   
• A treatment plan will then be suggested, if necessary accessing external resources in your region and including the network (GP, school, etc.)   

We will propose a follow up for as long as we consider your child requires it. 

This method can be useful both for preventing pain, the fear associated with the treatment, and in dealing with chronic pain. The unit carries out research on subjects including complex regional pain syndrome in children; neurodiversity and paediatric chronic pain; complementary and alternative medicine in the case of chronic pain.