Webinar Series

ChildKind Webinar Series

The ChildKind webinar series features presentations and Q&A with guests and panelists made up of pain experts and ChildKind representatives. Hosted quarterly, topics range from best practices in pain treatment, discussions about obstacles to developing & sustaining pain management infrastructure, and current topics of importance.

“Communicating with Children and Families about Chronic Pain”

September 30, 2024

Talking about chronic pain can be a delicate matter, as it affects not just the child experiencing it but also their parents and caregivers. This webinar, presented by ChildKind President and Founder Dr. Neil Schechter, provided communication tips and ideas about how to make the conversation successful. 

Attendees learned to:

  • Understand the factors that make chronic pain difficult to discuss with patients
  • Identify the key elements essential to include in a feedback session for chronic pain
  • Select and use appropriate metaphors in the feedback session

Click here to view the webinar recording.

“Pediatric Pain Resources – Options for your Patients and Families”

March 21, 2024

As clinicians we face challenges on a daily basis when our patients are in pain. While in your care, you can maximize your use of the tools and resources you have to provide the best assessment and treatment. But what happens when your patient goes home? Will they have access to education? Can they find support from groups or people going through similar challenges? This webinar provided ideas and information on organizations that are available for patients.

The webinar focused on:

  • Program descriptions and offerings
  • Education and empowerment for patients
  • Support from a community – your patient is not alone
  • Collaboration with the clinical community
Panelists

Casey Cashman, Director of Fundraising and the Pediatric Pain Warrior program at the U.S. Pain Foundation

Nicole Hemmenway,  CEO of the U.S. Pain Foundation and co-founder of the organization’s flagship program, INvisible Project

Jody Thomas, PhD, Founder and CEO of The Meg Foundation

Lanre Tunji-Ajayi, Founder of the Sickle Cell Awareness Group of Ontario (Canada)

Click here to view the webinar recording

“Functional Abdominal Pain: Is it all in my head?”

October 13, 2023

A state of the art review of the current understanding of the pathophysiology, evaluation and multidisciplinary treatment of Functional Abdominal Pain. This webinar was led by Samuel Nurko, MD, MPH, Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Co-Director of the Center for Motility and Functional Bowel Disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Click here to view the webinar recording.

“Quality Improvement in Pain assessment and Treatment”

June 28, 2023

Pain assessment and treatment is an ongoing challenge. In order to address these challenges, quality improvement is integral to the process. A stepwise approach to QI is helpful to understand the problem (e.g., baseline data, root causes) and to structure how data can feedback into improvements. In this webinar you will hear firsthand about the QI story at a ChildKind certified institution and be able to join the discussion of ways to improve pain-related QI.

The webinar focused on:

  • Accessing and leveraging QI through EMR systems
  • Steps to a successful QI approach
  • Gathering the right team and institutional support
  • Challenges and successes in quality improvement
Panelists

Allison Barberio, MHSA, CPHQ

Ilana Waynik, MD

Click here to view the webinar recording

 

“Pain Assessment and Treatment in Children and Youth with Developmental Disabilities”

March 13, 2023

Pain assessment and treatment can be challenging in all patient populations.  Even more so with children and youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Their pain can be difficult to manage, and many children who have developmental disabilities and are nonverbal may not be capable of providing accurate self-reports about their pain.

The presentations and discussion focused on:

  • Assessing pain in children with limited communication skills: Challenges and best practice
  • Strategies for treatment in children and youth with developmental delay: What is different, what is not
  • What to do when, even with a good plan, pain still persists (what to do when you get stuck)
Panelists

Julie Hauer, MD

Tim Oberlander, MD, FRCPC

Frank Symons, Ph.D.

Click here to view the webinar recording

“Building a Systemic Network to Support Evidence Based Psychological Care in Pediatric Chronic Pain”

September 29, 2022

This 3rd Annual Maureen Strafford webinar was led by Dr. Rachael Coakley.  The presentation focused on strategies for moving clinical research into routine practice to improve the quality, effectiveness, and accessibility of pediatric chronic pain care.  Specifically, Dr. Coakley featured the development and dissemination of The Comfort Ability Program, a brief, structured, evidence-based group intervention for adolescents with chronic pain and their parents.

The presentation highlighted:

  • Current gaps in clinical care of pediatric patients with chronic pain
  • The value of adopting an implementation science framework that simultaneously evaluates efficacy, generalizability, and systems level implementation resources to effectively close these gaps
  • The development and dissemination of the Comfort Ability Program workshops, an international network of 26 children’s hospitals delivering evidence-based psychological care to pediatric patients and their parents

Click here to view the webinar recording.

 

“COVID-19’s Impact on Pediatric Pain – Present and Future”

June 16, 2022

As more children and youth have been impacted by COVID experts are looking at the subset of pediatric patients who have been impacted by the lasting effects of public health measures as well as from persistent post-Covid symptoms. Children and youth with chronic pain are amongst those who have been impacted.  

The webinar included brief presentations and a discussion focusing on:

  • The impact that public health measures have had on children and youth with chronic pain
  • Challenges to the treatment of pain during a pandemic
  • Models of care for long-Covid pediatric patients
  • Lessons learned to date on long-Covid and pain
Panelists

Cara Hoffart, DO.  

Deirdre Logan, PhD.    

Laura Malone, MD, PhD. 

Jennifer Stinson, RN-EC, PhD, CPNP, FAAN 

Click here to view the webinar recording.

Recalibrate: Lessons learned on grit, resilience, and compassion

February 2, 2022

Presented by Pam Ressler, RN, MS, HNB-BC

We have all been changed by the experience of living through the pandemic.  As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, this webinar centers on some lessons learned and how can we refocus and recalibrate ourselves and our organizations to create innovative models that support wellbeing.

Click here to view the webinar recording.

 

“Sickle Cell Disease Pain and Treatment Disparities”

October 8, 2021

The second Annual Maureen Strafford ChildKind Webinar on Pediatric Pain, honoring a vibrant pain champion whose voice was recently stilled but whose work lives on in the work that we all do to improve humane care for children.

This webinar was led by Dr. Wally Smith, an expert on Sickle Cell Disease and widely known for his endless dedication in helping to improve the lives of the approximately 100,000 people in the United States who have Sickle Cell Disease.  The webinar included a presentation and discussion highlighting the following points:

  • Non-cancer pain is undertreated, underrecognized
  • Pain in minority populations may be undertreated
  • Pain in SCD is poorly measured, poorly understood
  • Pain in SCD is undertreated
  • Patients with SCD are misunderstood, stigmatized
  • Solutions to the SCD Rx conundrum involve changing science, patients, physicians, and society

Click here to view the webinar recording.

“Leveraging massive vaccine roll out to improve needle pain management for all children: A community of practice discussion”

June 11, 2021

Needle pain is an ongoing fear for upwards to 1 in 2 children and adolescents.  During these times of vaccination for a large portion of the population we can continue to learn and share strategies about what works well for needle pain management. This webinar focused on:

  • Successful strategies to minimize needle pain
  • Systems used to educate the public about needle pain management
  • Lessons learned from a multidisciplinary perspective
  • Challenges and strategies to working with policy makers
  • Next steps for practitioners and administrators
Panelists

Katie Birnie, PhD, RPsych 

Jody Thomas, PhD 

Anna Taddio, PhD

Click here to view the webinar recording.

 

“Pandemic or pediatric pain – why should we need to choose?”

February 24, 2021

The pandemic has caused stress and change at most hospitals.  As institutions are struggling with competing priorities, it can be challenging to keep pain care in sight.  This webinar focused on: 

  • Successful strategies to keeping pain care present 
  • Adjustments needed to maintain your level of pain care as staffing has shifted
  • Lessons learned from the MD, RN, and Child Life perspective 
  • How telehealth has played a role in patient care 
Panelists

Dora Castro-Ahillen, MA, CCLS, LCPC 

Laura Rayner, RN, MN 

Bill Zempsky, MD, MPH 

Click here to view the webinar recording.

“Changing our approach to pediatric pain management”

September 11, 2020

The inaugural webinar was led by Dr. Chris Eccleston, an internationally known expert on evidence-based and innovative pain treatment.  During the webinar he discussed changing our approach to paediatric pain.  Stemming from the work of the Time for Change program, the webinar focussed on the four transformative goals identified :

  • Make pain matter
  • Make pain understood
  • Make pain visible
  • Make pain better

This webinar was the first Annual Maureen Strafford ChildKind Webinar on Pediatric Pain, honoring a vibrant pain champion whose voice was recently stilled but whose work lives on in the work that we all do to improve humane care for children.

Click here to view the webinar recording.