A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Helfer Skin Tap Technique in Pain Reduction among Infants Undergoing Intramuscular Vaccination in Tertiary Care Setting, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract
Introduction: Pain is a common and disagreeable sensation for children and adult. Every child has his or her own perception of pain. Routine immunizations are the most frequent painful medical procedure during childhood. Health care professionals trying to provide vaccine to the infants with a less painful experience at their level of comfort. Skin tapping (Helfer skin technique) is one of the methods which keeps the muscles relaxed and thus reduce pain while administering IM vaccination. The researcher felt the need to do the study on the Effectiveness of Helfer Skin Tap Technique on Pain Reduction among Infants Undergoing Intramuscular Vaccination in Tertiary Care Setting, Coimbatore with the following objectives:
•To assess the pain level of infants receiving intramuscular vaccination in routine group and treatment group.
•To compare the pre and post-test level of pain during intramuscular vaccination among infants in routine and treatment group.
•To compare the pain level of infants during intramuscular vaccination between routine group and treatment group at various time intervals.
•To associate the selected demographic variables with the pain level of infants among treatment and routine group.
Materials and Methods: Quantitative research approach, quasi experimental, timeseries design was adopted. The study was conducted in pediatric vaccination clinic in a tertiary care Hospital, Peelamedu, Coimbatore. Purposive sampling technique used to select the eligible population. Simple random sampling technique was used to allocate the 60 study subjects to treatment and routine group which comprised 30 in each group. FLACC pain scale was used to assess the vaccination pain for before giving vaccination, 1, 5, and at 10 minutes after vaccination among infants undergoing intramuscular vaccination.
Results: There was a significant reduction in pain perception among infants in treatment group during vaccination (5.30 ± 1.74, p<0.001), after the vaccination at 1st minute (3.93 ± 1.51, p<0.001) and 5th minute (2.03 ± 1.69, p<0.001) and at 10th minute (0.39 ± 0.79, p<0.001)than the routine group. Female infants 15 (50%) experienced severe pain compared with male infants 12 (40%) in routine group (χ2 = 6.44, P<0.01). For other demographic variables there was no association in treatment and routine group.
Conclusion: Helfer skin tap technique was effective in reducing the IM vaccination pain during and after the vaccination.
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