Parents' perceptions and use of analgesics at home after children's day surgery.

BACKGROUND: Children are found to suffer from unnecessarily severe postoperative pain following day surgery. Reasons for parents' insufficient use of analgesics may be based on misleading perceptions of children's analgesics. The purpose of this study was to describe parents' perceptions and use of analgesics for children after discharge at home.

METHODS: In this survey, 840 questionnaires were given to parents, and answers from 201 mothers and 114 fathers whose children, aged 1-6 years, had undergone day surgery in 10 Finnish hospitals are presented.

RESULTS: One-third (36%) of the children were assessed as having moderate or severe postoperative pain after discharge. More than three-quarters of the parents had given analgesics to the child. Analgesics were given mostly to children who were assessed to have pain and found to have several types of pain behaviour. Most of the parents had accurate perceptions of children's analgesics, but some of them had misleading perceptions of the nature and adverse effects of children's analgesics, which were related to giving analgesics to the child. Fathers, more often than mothers, seem to have such misleading perceptions.

CONCLUSIONS: Parents tended to give analgesics to children who actually needed pain alleviation. Parents' perceptions of children's analgesics were mostly accurate. However, misleading perceptions of children's analgesics also exist among the parents. These misleading perceptions appear to decrease parents' use of children's postoperative pain medication.