Editor—It is now widely accepted that even the most preterm babies experience pain. This is difficult to measure and a number of clinical scales have been developed to make this assessment as objective as possible. Without the use of objective scales, the assessment of pain can become very subjective. We have measured staff perceptions of pain experienced by babies in different clinical situations in a neonatal intensive care unit. Clinical scenarios were presented to nursing and medical staff of the Exeter Neonatal Unit, and they were asked to score on a visual analogue scale the severity of pain …