The Riley Infant Pain Scale was developed at Riley Hospital for Children in Indiana. It is intended to assess pain in preverbal infants. It was adapted from the Pain Rating Scale used at Riley Hospital.
Parameters used to evaluate infants:
(1) facial
(2) body movement
(3) sleep
(4) verbal/touch
(5) consolability
(6) response to movements/touch
|
Parameter |
Finding |
Points |
|---|---|---|
|
facial |
neutral/smiling |
0 |
|
|
frowning/grimacing |
1 |
|
|
clenched teeth |
2 |
|
|
full cry expression |
3 |
|
body movement |
calm, relaxed |
0 |
|
|
restless/fidgeting |
1 |
|
|
moderate agitation or moderate mobility |
2 |
|
|
thrashing, flailing, incessant agitation, or strong voluntary immobility |
3 |
|
sleep |
sleeping quietly with easy respirations |
0 |
|
|
restless while asleep |
1 |
|
|
sleeps intermittently (sleep/awake) |
2 |
|
|
sleeping for prolonged periods of time interrupted by jerky movements or unable to sleep |
3 |
|
verbal/vocal |
no cry |
0 |
|
|
whimpering, complaining |
1 |
|
|
pain crying |
2 |
|
|
screaming, high pitched cry |
3 |
|
consolability |
neutral |
0 |
|
|
easy to console |
1 |
|
|
not easy to console |
2 |
|
|
inconsolable |
3 |
|
response to movement/touch |
moves easily |
0 |
|
|
winces when touched or moved |
1 |
|
|
cries out when moved/touched |
2 |
|
|
high pitched cry or scream when touched or moved |
3 |
Riley Infant Pain Scale =
= SUM(points for the 6 parameters)
average value =
= (Riley Infant Pain Scale) / 6
Interpretation:
• minimum score: 0
• maximum score: 18
• The higher the score, the more marked the pain.
• An alternative method of scoring is to consider the table as 4 columns graded from 0 to 3, and to assign the infant to the grade with the features matching the child's behavior (page 351, Schade 1996). This is similar to the use of the Riley Pain Rating Scale.
Purpose: To evaluate an infant's pain behavior using the Riley Infant Pain Scale (RIPS).
Specialty: Pedatrics
Objective: severity, prognosis, stage
ICD-10: R52,
