SAN DIEGO (Reuters Health) - Parents tend to put off giving their children painkiller medication after relatively minor day surgery, even though their children may be in substantial pain, according to the results of a study conducted in Finland.

What's more, parents expect their boys to tolerate more pain than their girls, noted Paivi Kankkunen, a registered nurse and researcher at the University of Kuopio in Kuopio, Finland. And fathers expect their children to endure pain more than do mothers, Kankkunen reported here at the 10th World Congress on Pain.

"I'm not very surprised about the findings," said Kankkunen, who has worked as a pediatric nurse and says the Finns tend to be stoic about the need for pain relief, both for themselves and their offspring.

In her survey of 201 mothers and 114 fathers whose children had undergone minor day surgery, she found that fathers, more often than mothers, said their child was capable of pretending to have pain, that their child should learn to tolerate pain and that postoperative pain is acceptable because the operation will have long-term health benefits to the child.

These perceptions of children's pain, Kankkunen pointed out, may be culturally transmitted and she suggests nurses should educate parents about pain and painkiller medication for children.

"The message (from my study) would be for the nurses to give information to parents," she said.

Kankkunen believes her study is the first in Finland to study perceptions of pain along gender lines. She can't say if her findings would hold up in other cultures.

She added that a typical response from parents surveyed was: "My child should learn to tolerate pain." If the child suffered pain after minor surgery, the parents tended to say that it would get better within a few days. "In a few days," the parents said, "they will forget about the pain."

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".