Accuracy of children's pain memories

Despite its importance in clinical practice, little research has examined memory for pain in children. This prospective study tried to justify the use of children's pain recall in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to (a) investigate the accuracy of children's recall of their worst and average pain intensity when controlling for the effects of repeated pain measurement and (b) examine the influence of children's anxiety, age, general memory ability and pain coping strategies on this accuracy. The accuracy of children's recalled pain intensities was studied in 55 inpatients aged 5–16 years by comparing the level of recorded pain intensity with the level of recalled pain intensity 1 day and 1 week after recording using Bieri's Faces Pain Scale. The accuracy of children's recalled pain intensities was high and showed little decrement over 1 week. Older children had more accurate recall of their worst pain intensity. Anxiety, general memory ability and pain coping strategies were not related to accuracy of recalled pain intensities.