A. Welcome
Welcome to the "Management of fever and pain in babies and children" resource
We hope that you will enjoy working with the material in this resource and that you find it helps you develop your own practice. The resource is divided into four units
• Unit 1: Fever
• Unit 2: Pain
• Unit 3: Ibuprofen and Paracetamol
• Unit 4: What the experts say
These units are divided into sessions.
B. Resource suitability
• This resource has been designed for practitioners working with children and their families in both the acute and community settings.
• This means that if you are a children’s nurse, a health visitor, a school nurse, neonatal nurse or a practice nurse it is likely to be really useful for you.
• Parents may find sections of this resource useful in helping them understand their child’s pain and/or fever.
• This resource is not aimed at specific grades of practitioner although ideally you would be working in practice with access to children as this will facilitate the ease with which you can undertake the guided and reflective activities.
• This resource could be used to refresh/update your knowledge, understanding and practice in these two important areas or provide new knowledge to you.
• The whole of this resource is underpinned by a reflective approach as this will help you to make sense of the information, see its relevance to your practice and help you to develop your practice with children and their parents and make it more evidence-based.
C. Working your way through the resource
Pacing yourself
• Everyone works and studies at their own pace. This is important and you may find that in some places in the resource you are taking a little less or a little more time than we have indicated. This is absolutely fine and you should not worry about this. The key thing is to reflect on the material and see how it can help inform your practice.
• We have indicated the amount of time we estimate it will take you to undertake the material in the resource; this includes you reading the material and doing the activities.
• We have divided the material into sessions as we realise you may have limited periods of time available for study. We hope that this will help you plan your study time with the resource. You may find it helpful if you create a timetable for yourself and put your study time into your diary or onto a calendar.
• You could set yourself small goals such as “In the next two weeks I will read and complete the activities for one/two/three sub-sections.” You may also find that it is worthwhile building in some real periods of reflection – these may be particularly useful after you have completed a section of the resource.
• Completing the resource is not a race – but it is an opportunity for you to take some focussed time to consider two very common symptoms that children present with.
Reflective Activities
• We have created a number of learning and reflective activities for you to undertake. Whilst you don’t have to do all of them we would suggest that to get the most of the resource you should do all of them.
• Nearly all of the activities are aimed at being directly related to your practice and to you as a practitioner who wants to develop their knowledge, understanding and ability to problem solve and make decisions. Some activities require you to take “time out” to reflect whilst others will involve you taking “time out” and actively getting some information from your practice setting. These ones may take a little more organisation on your part.
• We will indicate these information gathering activities to you as you go along:
• The “at your desk” reflections we will mark as IMAGE HERE
• Where we have identified an activity for you to undertake we have also left space for you to fill in your answers and/or your reflective notes.
• Each session has learning outcomes, a series of small activities and a final larger activity. The activities help you move the material, reflect on what you have read and explored and help you achieve the learning outcomes.
Working online or working offline
• To make things as easy as possible for you we do not mind if you use the resource online. However you may find it more practical to print the resource out and then work with it as a paper based resource. The resource works well either way.
• There are advantages and disadvantages to working online and offline but you can decide which way suits you best.
Working on your own or working with other people
• The resource has been designed so that you can either work through the material or your own or you could work through it with a group of your colleagues by forming an action learning set.
• Working independently means that you have complete control over the pace at which you move through the materials.
• Working as a member of a group (or action learning set) means that you more easily share the ideas generated by using the resource. You can perhaps divide the material between the group with each member taking lead responsibility for a section. Working as part of a group or set can sometimes mean that you can be a more powerful influence for change.
D. AND FINALLY!
• Whichever way you decide to work through the resource – on your own or with other people, online or offline, fast or slow – you should enjoy your learning and find that the opportunity for guided reflection does impact on your practice.
• Good luck with your studies and remember to evaluate the resource when you have completed it.
