Nursing Care in the Assessment and Relief of Neonatal Pain

For a long time it was thought that newborns did not feel pain due to the immaturity of their neurological system. However studies show that nociception is present from the early stages of a baby's development. Pain is a common symptom in the daily life of newborns admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit due to the large number of painful procedures to which they are subjected. In this context pain assessment is one of the main challenges in the field of Neonatology due to the inability of newborns to verbalize. It is of fundamental importance that nursing professionals are attentive to the behavioral and physiological changes that usually accompany the painful episode so that they can perform an adequate assessment of pain using appropriate scales and measures to minimize this event. This study aimed to identify how nurses assess pain in newborns and discuss the interventions performed to relieve their pain in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit environment.