Comparison of skin traction, pressure, and rapid muscle release with conventional method on intramuscular injection pain: A randomized clinical trial

Intramuscular (IM) injection is one of the causes of anxiety and pain in patients, using new techniques and creating a pleasant experience is of the legal and ethical duties of nurses. We aimed to investigate comparison of skin traction, pressure, and rapid muscle release with conventional method on IM injection pain.

This clinical trial investigated 28 patients (56 samples) who required Methocarbamol injection. Two 5 cc Methocarbamol were injected for each patient by the conventional and innovative methods. In the innovative technique, after applying skin traction and imposing deep pressure to the muscle, the needle was inserted at a 90° in the muscle and injected after aspiration. However, this deep pressure was not applied in the conventional method. The pain was measured using visual analog scale. STATA software version 12 was used for statically analysis. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The findings showed pain intensity in innovative method and conventional method was 1.17 ± 0.75 and 2.78 ± 1.61, respectively. The difference was statistically significant (P = 0.001). The minimum pain intensity in innovative method was 0 and maximum was 4, meanwhile in conventional injection, the lowest and highest pain intensity was 0 and 6 respectively.

The results of this study showed that innovative method can be used as a substitute for conventional method to reduce IM injection pain.