Paediatric procedural sedation current practice and challenges in Cape Town

Children often present to the Emergency Centre (EC) with painful injuries, or conditions which require painful or upsetting interventions to diagnose or treat. Procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) refers to the pharmacologic technique of managing the child’s pain and anxiety. The appropriate management of pain and anxiety in the EC is a significant facet of emergency care for all patients, especially in paediatric patients.1 This is achieved partly by the administration of sedative, dissociative, or analgesic drugs which alter awareness, completely sedate the patient, reduce or eliminate pain.2,3,4 PSA is an essential component of Emergency Medicine practice and is a core skill acquired in Emergency Medicine training programs. There is good evidence that proactively addressing pain and anxiety may improve quality of care and patient satisfaction by facilitating interventional procedures and minimizing patient suffering.5

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Division of Emergency Medicine

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Burger, Adrian

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Hodkinson, PW
• Wallis, LA

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/2857

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/2857