Child restraint in the acute setting of pediatric nursing: an extraordinarily stressful event

Lack of clarity regarding when or how to use restraint in pediatric nursing is in direct contrast to international legislation and children's rights activists, who continuously support increased safeguards to protect children and improved health-care services for children. The aim of this article is to present a review of available literature with the purpose of stimulating discussion on the topic of this extraordinarily stressful event in the lives of hospitalized children and their parents. Studies for this literature review were identified using library catalogues and computerized searches of the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Mbase, psychLIT, and Medline. Keywords used included restraint, immobilisation, acute restraint, child restraint, p(a)ediatric restraint, and elderly restraint. The majority of the articles reviewed were secondary sources that advocated awareness and encouraged the use of restraint alternatives when managing the care of a child during a procedure. The results of the review accentuates the dearth of research in relation to the use of restraints in pediatric nursing, and highlights the need for pediatric nurses and allied health-care professionals to explore this sensitive topic further. By failing to address these issues, it could be argued that researchers in child health are ignoring an extraordinarily stressful event in pediatric health care.