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Pain scale for older NICU patients

By Amy Cole posted 11-08-2014 05:57 AM

  
Our NICU will sometimes have babies stay up to one year of age. We use NPASS scale for all of our patients but these patients are no longer neonates. Does anyone use a pediatric pain scale for patients in the NICU and if so which one? And at what corrected gestational age (>44 weeks CGA?) would you change the pain scale?
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Mary Puchalski
12-10-2014 10:37 AM

Hi Amy,
The NPASS has now been validated in non-verbal infants up to 3 years of age. Pat Hummel, the original author of the N-PASS did this research for her PhD. I don't think it has been published yet, but here is a link to her disertation: http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1899&context=luc_diss.
You can contact her at phummel@lumc.edu. for more information.
Mary Puchalski, DNP, RNC-NIC, APRN, CNS, NNP-BC
Neonatal Nurse Practitioner/Instructor
Rush University
marynnp@gmail.com
(630) 269-2570

Donna Swirczynski
11-13-2014 09:22 AM

For our preterm infants we use the PIPPS. When infants reach 44 weeks we go to a non-verbal pain scale. We use the descriptors from the faces pain scale used in pediatrics.