Introduction:

Adequate pain management in children is an indicator of health care quality, so a practice based on evidence-based recommendations is now mandatory.

Objectives:

Identify criteria / standards for quality practices in the provision of nursing care to children pain management.

Methods:

Systematic Review (SR), based on the Cochrane Manual 5.1.0 guidelines by Higgins & Green (2011). Studies were searched in the databases Medline, Cochrane, Scielo, B-on, Lilacs, Uptodate, American Academy of Pediatrics, Proquest, World Health Organization, PubMed, in Portuguese and English, published after 2013. Of the 726 selected studies, 11 were subjected to the relevance test II and critical assessment of methodological quality by two independent researchers, 4 studies being selected and included in the RSL.

Results:

The following recommendations were identified: multidisciplinary pain approach by systematically assessing; intervene until the child has no pain, using pharmacological and non-pharmacological measures; use of topical lidocaine in invasive procedures; adjust the pain assessment scales algorithm; considering other factors, such as language, ethnicity and cultural factors that may influence the expression and assessment of pain; provide parents / caregivers with written information about counselling and assessing pain at discharge; obtain children's self-reports whenever possible; the continuous and systematic training of nurses has an impact on the pain valorisation and analgesics administration.

Conclusions:

The recommendations obtained define a guideline in paediatrics pain management and contribute to the implementation of excellent practices and improvement in the quality of nursing / health interventions.

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