28 Assessment of Pain and Provision of Non-Pharmacologic Analgesia to Children by Prehospital Providers in Southwestern Ontario: A Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Primary Subject area Emergency Medicine - Paediatric Background There is abundant evidence that provision of pharmacologic analgesia by prehospital providers to children is suboptimal. Most paediatric calls are performed by primary care paramedics (PCPs) who are unable to administer pharmacologic analgesia to children but can administer non-pharmacologic therapies. Objectives Our objective was to describe the provision of non-pharmacologic analgesia to children by prehospital providers. Design/Methods We reviewed all ambulance call reports (ACRs) of children 0-17 years with acutely painful conditions (headache, abdominal pain, injury, head/ears/eyes/nose/throat pain, and back pain) who were transported to a paediatric tertiary referral centre serving a catchment of > 1 million from 2017-2019. Data collection was recorded by two blinded assessors using a study-specific Excel™ sheet. The primary outcome was the proportion of children offered non-pharmacologic analgesia. We performed a stepwise logistic regression on the primary outcome using covariates defined a priori: age, sex, visible deformity, type of crew, complaint, pain score, call time, and prior analgesia. Results All 11,084 ACRs from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019 were reviewed. The sample included 5887/11084 (53.1%) males, ranging from 1 month to 17 years, with a mean (SD) age of 10.5 (5.6) years. Calls involved mainly PCPs [8576/11084 (77.4%)]. Non-trauma-related musculoskeletal injuries were most common, comprising 2743/11,084 (24.7%) of calls. Pain scores were documented in 6947/11084 (62.7%) of calls. The verbal numeric rating scale (0-10) was used in 5022/6947 (72.3%) of calls, with a mean (SD) score of 5.2 (3.2). Non-pharmacologic analgesia was provided in 2926/11084 (26.4%) of calls, most commonly splint (1115/2926, 38.1%) and ice (931/2926, 31.8%). Pharmacologic analgesia was provided in 458/11084 (4.1%) of calls. In the multivariate model, mild (OR: 3.2; 95% CI 2.3-4.4; p < 0 .001) and moderate pain (OR: 1.7; 95% CI 1.3-2.2) (versus no pain) were significant predictors of non-pharmacologic analgesia, whereas visible deformity (OR: 0.5; 95% CI 0.3-0.6; p < 0 .001) was a significant negative predictor. Conclusion The provision of non-pharmacologic analgesia to children in Southwestern Ontario by prehospital providers is suboptimal, despite moderate to severe pain. There is a clear need for education surrounding approaches to non-pharmacologic analgesia in children among prehospital providers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".