Vatican City (Fides Service) - “The child has a right to the least invasive and least painful means of diagnosis and therapy” according to article 8 of the Charter of Patient’s Rights at the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome. This right has become a daily practice at the Hospital which belongs to the Holy See. Bambino Gesù staff are particularly attentive to combine professional expertise with tender loving care.
At present the hospital is being thoroughly re-organised so that measuring pain will be part of the file of each little patient. The hospital has improved its programme to eliminate pain. Only ten years ago not much was known about the negative effects of pain also for child patients. For this reason and the fear that the use of opium based pain killers could create dependence pain among child patients, pain was rarely considered and treated only with totally inadequate methods.
Today it is known ever more widely that even the foetus experiences pain. On the basis of detailed knowledge many important hospitals in North America and elsewhere in the developed world have their own “Pain Service” highly specialised multidisciplinary units which watch and alleviate chronic and acute pain.
On the front of “alleviating pain”, Bambino Gesù Hospital has started special formation sessions for medical and nursing personnel on methods of pain measuring and analgesic techniques as well as relative indications and risks. For example ‘pain faces’ and “universal pain assessment tool”, internationally recognised as a qualified element of the alliance and cooperation for health built up between the hospital staff, the families and the child patients. (AP) (30/5/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:32 Parole:398)