Selling comfort: A survey of interventions for needle procedures in a pediatric hospital

Abstract Needle procedures are a necessary component of the treatment of hospitalized children. However, for many children they can be both painful and distressing. There was concern among the nurses at our pediatric hospital that we were not adequately controlling pain from needle procedures. We were interested in obtaining more information about the incidence and types of needle procedures and the current use of topical analgesics. A survey was designed to describe the frequency, type, time to complete, and perceived ease of needle procedures. The use of topical anesthetics and other comfort measures was also examined. The most common needle procedures performed were venipunctures for blood work, followed by intravenous cannulations, capillary sticks, port-a-cath access, and intramuscular injections. In total, 387 procedures were performed over a 23-day period. The majority of the procedures were perceived as easy, and the modal time to complete the procedures was 5 minutes. A topical anesthetic was used for 74 procedures (i.e., 19%), and the majority of these procedures were performed on the medical day unit with oncology patients. Results of the survey provided information about the day-to-day practice of needle procedures in order to identify both the supports and the barriers to providing these procedures atraumatically. Examining needle procedures within a framework of atraumatic care broadened our perspective and enabled us to integrate the use of topical anesthetics as just one of a number of strategies to minimize the pain and distress associated with needle procedures.