Abstract
While postoperative pain management was shown to reduce unwanted physiological and emotional outcomes, pediatric postoperative pain management remains suboptimal. Medical-clowns were shown to be beneficial in many medical contexts including reduction of stress, anxiety and pain. This study was set to assess the effectiveness of medical-clowns on pediatric postoperative pain reduction. Children age 4 or above, planned for elective hernia repair surgery were recruited. Children were randomly divided to a control or medicalclown escorted groups. Demographical and clinical data were collected using questionnaires and electronic sheets. Children escorted by clowns reported lower levels of pain upon admittance, discharge and 12- hours post-surgery. Statistically significant reduction of parental distress and significantly higher serum cortisol levels were observed in the clown-therapy group. Although small, our study supports the possibility that preoperative medical-clown therapy might be a cheap, safe and yet beneficial method for postoperative pain reduction.
Highlights
Introduction nectionThis connection is used to ronment of the medical facility unaware of alleviate stress and anxiety often related to upcoming operation, which further increas-The current definition of pain according the unfamiliar hospital environment, physi- es situation-associated stress. [page 44][Pediatric Reports 2019; 11:8165] ArticleDue to limited communication and tive interaction time ranged between 30 to child’s pain, the Wong Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS) is a valuable tool for analysis abilities, young and very-young 60 minutes
The ability of the medical clown to interact with young children as well as their parents prior to an operation was studied in the past and found to be effective in the reduction of preoperative anxiety, stress and worries in both children and parents.[31,32,33,34]
Once informed consent was obtained, demographical and physiological data was collected from child and parents as well as from medical records. This was followed by pre-operative pain assessment of the child using the Wong Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS) and pre-operative distress assessment of the child’s parents using Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) scale scores
Summary
Once informed consent was obtained, demographical and physiological data was collected from child and parents as well as from medical records. This was followed by pre-operative pain assessment of the child using the Wong Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS) and pre-operative distress assessment of the child’s parents using Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) scale scores. Parental post-operative SUD was assessed immediately after operation. The child’s post-operative WBS score was obtain immediately after surgery and parents were asked to record and report WBS scores at 3, 12- and 24-hours post-operation. Parents were asked to quantitively record and report the amount of pain-relief used in the first 24 hours after surgery
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