Facing pain in infancy and childhood

Abstract

Pain is a significant part of growing up. It is a powerful stimulus that drives primitive survival behaviour and teaches children to avoid hann and danger. The most common sources of pain in children are the everyday incidents, averaging one incident per child every three hours. Fortunately, few of these incidents result in serious injury and the pain associated with them is typically of short duration. When staying in a hospital, children, especially (premature) neonates, often experience pain as well. In this situation the most common sources of pain, apart from surgical intenrention, are invasive procedures, some for investigation and some for treatment