Focus on Pediatrics: Tip sheets can be designed for both staff and parents
Focus on Pediatrics: Tip sheets can be designed for both staff and parents
Include suggestions for reducing stress and anxiety
To help health care professionals and parents make procedures involving needles, such as a blood draw or spinal tap, less painful, Mia Crane, CCLS, a certified child-life specialist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, helped create two teaching sheets on nonpharmacological pain management. One tool is for nurses and practitioners and the other for parents.
The tool for professionals offers helpful tips on how to prepare the child for the procedure with age-appropriate relaxation techniques. The tip sheet for parents covers such information as ways to teach children coping strategies and words to avoid using when discussing the procedure with the child.
There are two types of children, says Crane. There are those who want to know everything that is going to happen and even want to watch what is going on and those who don’t want a whole lot of information. Therefore, parents need to assess how to work with their child, she says. They may ask the child if he or she wants to watch the procedure or look away.
Parents can help their children relax by taking slow, deep breaths and then pretending to blow out all the feelings they have inside that they don’t like.
Suggestions for staff include decreasing the stimulation in the room by talking softly and putting on soft music to help the child relax. This technique works well with all ages.
Infants do better during a painful procedure if allowed to be in a comforting position, such as held in their mother’s arms. Providing a pacifier or gently stroking or patting the infant helps.
Allowing a toddler to bring along a security object such as a stuffed animal is helpful. They also can be engaged by something that he or she likes, such as a favorite song. Distraction works well and may include pop-up books or blowing bubbles.
There are many things that preschool children find interesting that can act as a distraction such as view finders, kaleidoscopes, and "I Spy" books, says Crane. To help eliminate confusion with many adults talking to the child at once in an effort to calm him or her, the child can be asked to choose one adult to do the talking. That adult would wear a special hat.
School-age children can learn such techniques as abdominal breathing and guided imagery. "Guided imagery can be practiced prior to the procedure to help the child get familiar with the type of imagery he or she wants to do," says Crane. He or she also may choose to squeeze a stress ball, imagining that they are squeezing out all the feelings that they don’t like.
Also these stress management techniques can increase children’s coping skills in future stressful situations. "The strategies they learn at a young age, such as deep breathing, can be applied in different situations as they grow into adulthood," says Crane.
Sources
For more information about creating tip sheets for parents and practitioners, contact:
• Mia Crane, CCLS, Certified Child Life Specialist, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Child Life Department, 1405 Clifton Road N.E., Atlanta, GA 30322. Telephone: (404) 315-3060. E-mail: [email protected].
To help health care professionals and parents make procedures involving needles, such as a blood draw or spinal tap, less painful, Mia Crane, CCLS, a certified child-life specialist at Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, helped create two teaching sheets on nonpharmacological pain management. One tool is for nurses and practitioners and the other for parents.
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