Effect of Local Cold Application on Pain Response during Intravenous Cannula Insertion among Children

Children and their families get anxious when the child get sick and are admitted to the hospital. Several strategies are employed by pediatric nurses to avoid and lessen unpleasant emotions like anxiety, pain in kids and their families. Atraumatic care strategy is one of the method for minimizing or reducing physical stressors, preventing child-parent separation, and promoting a sense of control.

The study was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of local cold application on pain response during intravenous cannula insertion among children in a selected hospital at Trichy.

True experimental post-test only control group design was adopted for the study. 82 samples were recruited and assigned to the experimental and control group by using simple random sampling technique. FLACC pain scale was used as a data collection tool. Local cold application was done before intravenous cannula insertion.

Statistical analysis revealed that the mean pain score of experimental group 3.85±1.389 was lesser than that of control group 6.17±1.702 and the calculated t value 6.756 was significant at p<0.001. The study findings revealed that the local cold application was effective in reducing the pain response among children undergoing intravenous cannula insertion.