Donna Lee M. Wong

Donna L. Wong was spurred by a deep concern for the pain of children to develop a friendly tool for young patients to express their discomfort. She and a partner developed the Wong/Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale that patients use to rank their discomfort via a series of “smiley” and “unhappy” faces coded from 0–10. Today, this groundbreaking work is the international standard for assessing children’s pain. Wong was the first recipient of the Audrey Hepburn/Sigma Theta Tau International (Honor Society of Nursing) Award for contributions to the health and welfare of children. She was a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and has been listed in Who’s Who in American Nursing. She had done extensive work in counseling families with terminally ill children and was on the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Excellence in End of Life Care Project. Among her numerous publications, Wong is best known as coauthor of Nursing Care of Infants and Children, Essentials of Pediatric Nursing, Clinical Manual of Pediatric Nursing, Pediatric Quick Reference, and Maternal Child Nursing Care. These books continue to be the topselling texts in pediatric nursing and have been translated into 13 languages and sold in more than 30 countries. Wong died in May 2008.