Impact of an Educational Program on Pediatric Nurses Knowledge Regarding Non-Pharmacological Pain Management in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Hala El-Husseiny,Amal Khalil,Nabila Abed-Ella,Nagwa Mohamed

doi:10.21608/pssjn.2019.67084

Hala El-Husseiny, Amal Khalil + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.21608/pssjn.2019.67084

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Abstract

Background: Newborns in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU) can be exposed to many painful procedures and treatments. Aim: This study was to improve nurses’ practice regarding non-pharmacological management of pain in newborns in neonatal intensive care units. Subjects and Method: A quasi-experimental research design was utilized in this study. The subjects of the study consists of all the nurses working in the NICUs in Port Said hospitals (N=40) affiliated to the Ministry of Health, including El-Nasr general hospital, Port Said general hospital, Port Fouad general hospital and El-Tadamon health insurance hospital. The data were collected using a observational checklists Conclusion: the nurses had statistically significant improvements in applying non-pharmacological pain management during painful procedures in newborns included; venous and arterial puncture, cannulation and umbilical catheter insertion. However, there were inadequate total scores regarding nurses' practice. Recommendation: continuous training courses should be provided to nurses in order to keep their practice regarding non-pharmacological pain management up to date. Also, nurses should be encouraged to attend national and international conferences and workshops about non-pharmacological management for newborns

Highlights

Non-pharmacological management is effective in reducing mild to moderate pain (Abdallah et al, 2013) and agitation (Naughton, 2013) in addition to decreasing crying time following acute episodes of mild pain, like heel sticks and oral gastric tube insertion (Hall, 2012)
Table (1): illustrated the characteristics of the studied nurses, and showed that more than half of the studied nurses (62.5%) aged between 20 to less than 25 years, 57.5 % of them graduated from technical nursing institutes, while 15.0% had baccalaureate nursing degrees
It was revealed that at the pre-intervention phase, only 15% of the studied nurses mentioned the definition of non-pharmacological management of pain in newborns

Summary

Introduction

Non-pharmacological management is effective in reducing mild to moderate pain (Abdallah et al, 2013) and agitation (Naughton, 2013) in addition to decreasing crying time following acute episodes of mild pain, like heel sticks and oral gastric tube insertion (Hall, 2012). Non-pharmacological strategies include non-nutritive sucking (NNS), oral sucrose, swaddling, positioning, facilitated tucking (FT), holding and rocking, breast or bottle feeding, kangaroo care or skin to skin contact, multi-sensorial stimulation (SS) and reduction in noxious stimuli - irritant touch, bright lights and noise music (Chidambaram et al, 2014; Bellieni et al, 2016). These strategies stimulate the newborn in relevant developmental systems, such as oral, vestibular and motor ones. Nurses should be encouraged to attend national and international conferences and workshops about non-pharmacological management for newborns

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