What do we do?
The Acute Pain Service is a inpatient consulting service that assists in the management of difficult-to-manage pain, end-of-life-pain, withdrawal symptoms and weaning from opiates, patient/nurse controlled anesthesia (PCA/NCA) and epidural anesthesia.
What is acute pain?
Pain is “an unpleasant sensory and or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. (IASP) Acute pain is pain which is of short duration, usually less than one week. It stems from some ongoing pathology, such as tissue damage or pain after having surgery, trauma or sickle cell crisis. Tissue damage causes pain receptors to be activated. These pain receptors transmit signals through the spinal cord to the brain to be processed and evaluated with the end result of pain. There are psychosocial, cultural, developmental and environmental aspects to acute pain, as well as the obvious physiologic aspects.
Who are we?
We are a team of eight pediatric anesthesiologists with a special interest in pain and three certified nurse practitioners.
Contact Information
To contact the Acute Pain Service, page 494-Pain or call the operator after hours, on weekends and on holidays for the physician on call.