Sucrose is a method of pain relief that can be used for children during minor painful procedures. Pain left unrelieved has been found to lead to long-term consequences such as distress, anxiety, needle fear, parental non-adherence with vaccination administration, and avoidance of medical care. Therefore, it is important to ensure pain management methods are provided to infant and toddlers. The purpose of this project was to present a systematic review on the use of sucrose in child in primary care. The comfort theory by Kolcaba served as the theoretical framework in exploring the use of sucrose in children in primary care. A comprehensive search was completed and 37 articles pertaining to the use of sucrose were identified. The articles were appraised using Fineout-Overholt, Melnyk, Stillwell, and Williamson's critical appraisal guide and then categorized using Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt's level of evidence system. This systematic review revealed that 85 percent of the articles identified found sucrose to be an effective method of pain relief for children during minor painful procedures. This systematic review gives a final recommendation that sucrose should be used for pain relief during minor painful procedures for children up to 18 months of age. Future studies should be focused on translating this evidence into practice guidelines to narrow the knowledge to practice gap. The creation of practice guidelines would bring about a positive social change for infants and toddlers by providing pain relief methods such as sucrose in daily practice reducing anxiety and needle fear for children and their parents, increasing vaccine and medical care adherence.

Family-centered care (FCC) is considered the gold standard for care delivery in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). However, there are challenges with the implementation of FCC in practice and there is limited literature about how to tailor this approach for specialized NICU populations. To explore FCC for surgical neonates in the NICU, the concept was explored using Roger’s evolutionary concept analysis. Results illustrate that FCC in the NICU is a philosophy or care, rather than a set of interventions. The subsequent cross-sectional descriptive exploratory study showed that the surgical infants in our sample (n=11) received a limited amount of skin-to-skin care (median 0 mins/day) and parents reported challenges to being involved in their infant’s care. This thesis supports the challenges with the implementation of FCC in practice and both the need to consider multiple perspectives and the need for broader systemic change in order to support a FCC philosophy.