Kids Pain Collaborative at Redcliffe Hospital   

The opening of Redcliffe Hospital’s new paediatric emergency department section was the ideal time to improve pain management in children.  

Dr Jason Chan is the research lead in the Redcliffe Hospital Emergency Department. He said that despite clinicians’ best efforts, pain can be under-recognised and under-treated, especially in children.  

“The opening of Redcliffe Hospital’s new dedicated paediatric emergency department section was a good opportunity to improve our approach to pain management using a consumer-informed and co-design model that would improve the care and comfort of our smallest patients,” Dr Chan said.  

The Kids Pain Collective grew from a pilot study at the Queensland Children’s Hospital (QCH) led by Dr Suzanne Williams, a nurse practitioner and researcher with an interest in paediatric pain management.  

“It was Dr Kong Liew though, who brought the idea to Redcliffe. He had worked across both Redcliffe Hospital and the QCH and could see the potential to translate some of those findings to our paediatric care here,” Dr Chan said.  

The Kids Pain Collective works by gathering data and consumer feedback from paediatric patients and their carers based on their experiences of pain management in the Emergency Department setting.  

“From there, partnering with experienced implementation researchers from QUT, we can identify any gaps to inform the development of a pain model that is both feasible and achievable in our Emergency Department,” Dr Chan said.  

“Once we’ve arrived at that pain model for our paediatric patients, we’ll measure the difference it makes, through metrics such as delivery time for analgesia, patient length of stay, and the level of parental or child satisfaction with how their pain was managed.  

“This data will be compared to the baseline we established prior to the rollout of the new pain model. If the findings are positive, they could be translatable to other emergency departments with similar contexts and environments.”  

Dr Alan Yan is the Director of the Redcliffe Emergency Department and has high hopes for the success of the Kids Pain Collaborative and those involved in the project.  

“The Kids Pain Collaborative has a great team of clinicians behind it and strong support from the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF), which has provided grant funding,” Dr Yan said.  

“The project is based around a co-design model, it’s evidence-based, and an interdisciplinary team is undertaking it. That’s the right recipe for research success.”  

Dr Yan also paid tribute to the late Dr Kong Liew, who brought the Kids Pain Collaborative to Redcliffe before he passed away in 2023.  

“This project is just one small part of Dr Liew’s legacy of compassion and care,” he said.  

Clinicians from Redcliffe Hospital’s Emergency Department are working with researchers to develop an improved model of pain management in children.