Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

More than 80,000 Canadian children have surgery every year, some of whom will experience significant pain in the days to weeks following their surgery. As a result of changes to our health care system, many of these surgeries don't require a hospital stay and children recover at home. While this is a welcome change for children and families, it shifts the responsibility of managing the child's pain after surgery to the family. Using technology, such as smartphone apps, allows every child to access the highest quality care once they leave the hospital, no matter where they live. We are designing an smartphone app to help children and their parents manage pain at home after surgery. We spoke with teens, their parents, and healthcare providers to find out what features are important to include in the smartphone app. Based on their input, we designed an app to help teens (a) track pain, sleep, mood and activities, (b) set and try to meet their goals to improve function, and (c) give advice about how to manage pain in the moment. We also spoke with pain experts about the best pain treatment information to include. This presentation shares that information with other healthcare providers and families with an interest in pain.