Parental Involvement in Neonatal and Infant Pain Prevention and Management: Evidence, Opportunities and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

A wealth of knowledge is available on effective and safe strategies for neonatal and infant pain prevention and management, such as skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, facilitated tucking, comforting/positioning, sweet solutions, topical anesthetics, and others. Importantly, parents can play an active role in pain management interventions, such as skin-to-skin contact, facilitated tucking and breastfeeding when feasible. However, to support parents in this role, they need knowledge and opportunities to participate in their children’s pain management. This Special Issue welcomes original articles focusing on parental involvement in pain prevention and management in neonates and infants. Our goal is to highlight current research on the topic, strategies being implemented in diverse clinical settings, implementation science studies and future directions for research and practice. We anticipate a wide variety of research designs and methodologies and we encourage submissions authored in partnerships with parents and persons with lived experience.

Dr. Mariana Bueno
Prof. Dr. Denise Harrison
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• pain management
• neonate
• infant
• parent
• parent-delivered intervention