The parents’ postoperative pain measure: replication and extension to 2–6-year-old children

Abstract

Pain assessment is a difficult task for parents at home following children's surgery. The purpose of the present study was to confirm the psychometric properties of a behavioural measure of postoperative pain developed to assist parents with pain assessment in children aged 7–12 years following day surgery. The study also examined the reliability and validity of the measure with children aged 2–6 years. Participants were 51 parents of children aged 7–12 years and 107 parents of children aged 2–6 years. For the 2 days following surgery, parents completed a pain diary that included global ratings of their children's pain and the 15-item Parents’ Postoperative Pain Measure (PPPM). The older children provided self-reports of their pain intensity. The PPPM items showed good internal consistency on the two postoperative days for both samples (α’s=0.81–0.88) and scores on the PPPM were highly correlated with children's (for the older children) and parents’ (for the young children) global ratings of pain ( r's=0.53–0.72). As global pain ratings decreased from Days 1 to 2, so did scores on the PPPM. Scores on the PPPM were successful in discriminating between children who had undergone low/moderate and high pain surgeries. The results of this study provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the PPPM as a measure of postoperative pain among children aged 2 through to 12 years.