Effectiveness of Distraction Techniques on Pain Intensity During Immunization Among Infants

Immunization is an important part of public health intervention and cost effective strategy to control the infectious diseases especially in children and it is one of the most common painful procedure in infants. Pain during immunization leads to distressing experience for the infant, parents and health care worker. Distraction is non pharmacological method which is used for diverting attention from noxious stimulus by passively redirecting the attention or by actively performed by the subject in the performance of diversion technique. Aim and objectives:The aim of present study was to compare the effectiveness of distraction techniques on pain intensity during immunization among infants. The objectives of the study were to assess and compare the mean pain scores among infants receiving immunization in electronic toy group, key toy group, simple toy group and control group and to find out the association of pain scores among infants receiving immunization with their selected variables. Material and methods: A true experimental multiple intervention post test control design was used. There were 100 infants selected using simple random sampling technique and were randomly allocated in various groups such as electronic toy group, key toy group, simple toy group and control group using lottery method. During immunization, distraction techniques were shown to experimental groups and routine care was given to control group. Research tool was submitted to 7 experts from various specialists for validity. Reliability was calculated by Kappa method and it was 0.83 of FLACC pain scale to assess pain intensity during immunization among infants. Data collection was done in January 2017. The obtained data was analyzed and interpreted in terms of objectives and research hypotheses. Analysis was done by using descriptive and inferential statistics.