The poster presentation to the International Symposium on Pediatric pain 2023 will be focusing on the findings from a study entitled "Exploring strategies for capacity enhancement of nurse educators and preceptors to facilitate nursing students’ learning pediatric pain management in Rwanda". 
The study findings underscore the importance of support from teaching and clinical institutions, health system leadership, and health professional regulatory bodies as the bedrock for improving pre-licensure pediatric pain education in nursing. This is a unique contribution toward the enactment of effective pediatric pain management practices
The authors are eager to share the research findings with participants to the symposium and expect to have constructive discussions for further research orientation in this area.
Background and Aims
Nursing pain education has reportedly been shown to be essential to improve pediatric patient outcomes because it gives soon-to-be and practicing nurses the knowledge and abilities to address pediatric pain needs (Alotaibi, Higgins, Day, & Chan, 2018; Smeland et al., 2018).
Evidence showed that curricular pain content and delivery methods, as well as students' personal characteristics and previous experiences, educators' knowledge, skills, and beliefs, and students' exposure to leaders in pain education, all have a significant impact on how pain is taught and learned in nursing education programs. A study that explored factors influencing the facilitation of nursing students’ competency for pediatric pain management in Rwanda indicated the factors included students’ motivation, facilitators’ attributes, collaboration between academics and clinicians, nurses’ limited autonomy for decision-making regarding pediatric pain management practices, shortage of resources, and educational qualification (Uwimana et al., 2022). This paper presents strategies to support the capacity enhancement of nurse educators and preceptors facilitating students’ learning pediatric pain management in Rwanda.
Methods
Discussions based on nominal group technique (NGT) were used as part of the qualitative methodology adopted in this study. A total of 29 participants, including nurse academicians, nurse clinicians, and nursing students were selected by purposively sampling.
A two-day workshop was organized for the first round of NGTs with the purpose to identify key strategies for improving the ability of nurse educators and preceptors to facilitate the learning of pediatric pain management among nursing students. Eight academic nurses, 4 nurse preceptors, and 2 nursing students took part in this first round of NGTs. A second round of NGT with 6 nursing faculty, 3 academic nurse leaders, 2 nurse preceptors, 2 clinical nurse leaders, 1 nurse leader from a regulatory agency, and 1 nursing student was conducted in a 1-day workshop four weeks later. The aim was to validate through a consensual agreement of participants on the relevance, the context, and the structure of a developed framework for improving the ability of nurse educators and preceptors to facilitate nursing students learning pediatric pain management.
The Institutional Review Board of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Rwanda approved this study prior to its implementation, (No. 036/CMHS IRB/2020).
Results
Four categories of strategies to improve the capacity of nurse educators and preceptors emerged from the agreements of participants as the key concepts to base on for developing a framework. The identified key strategies included curriculum enhancement, pediatric pain management competence development for nurse educators and preceptors, nurse empowerment, and collaboration reinforcement. The support from teaching institutions, clinical settings, health care system leadership, and health professional regulatory bodies was identified as the foundation for the implementation of a framework to enhance nurse educators’ and nurse preceptors’ capability of facilitating students to learn pediatric pain management. 
Conclusion
The identified strategies are interrelated and were mapped into a framework that shows interactions between key players at various levels, from policy and decision-makers to implementers and beneficiaries of capacity enhancement for facilitating nursing pediatric pain management competence. It gives an opportunity to address the gaps in nursing pain education in the context of resource-limited settings such as Rwanda. It can also be applied in practice and research, in line with the need to raise the standard of care of children in pain, and can be adapted for use to meet the needs of other healthcare professionals other than nurses.