A call to focus on digital health technologies in hospitalized children's pain care: clinician experts' qualitative insights on optimizing electronic medical records to improve care.

Most hospitalized children experience pain which is often inadequately assessed and undertreated. Exposure to undertreated childhood pain is associated with negative short- and long-term outcomes, and can detrimentally impact families, health services and communities. Adopting electronic medical records (EMR) in pediatric hospitals is a promising mechanism to transform care. As part of a larger program of research, this study examined the perspectives of pediatric clinical pain experts about how to capitalize on EMR designs to drive optimal family-centered pain care. A qualitative descriptive study design was used and fourteen nursing and medical experts from five countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Qatar) were interviewed online using Zoom for Healthcare. We applied a reflexive content analysis to the data and constructed four broad categories: 'capturing the pain story', 'working with user-friendly systems', 'patient and family engagement and shared decision making', and 'augmenting pain knowledge and awareness'. These findings outline expert recommendations for EMR designs that facilitate broad biopsychosocial pain assessments and multimodal treatments, and customized functionality that safeguards high-risk practices without overwhelming clinicians. Future research should study the use of patient and family controlled interactive bedside technology to and their potential to promote shared decision-making and optimize pain care outcomes.