Effectiveness of Cartoon Movies as Distracter on Pain among Children Undergoing Venipuncture

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Thus it is important for health care providers to follow a child centered or individual approach in their assessment and management of pain and painful procedures. Distraction is the most frequent intervention used in the pediatric department to guide childrens attention away from the painful stimuli and reduce pain Purpose to assess the effectiveness of cartoon movies as distracter on pain among children undergoing venipuncture, Pune, India. Objectives - To assess the level of pain among children undergoing venipuncture in the control group, to assess the level of pain among children undergoing venipuncture in the experimental group during intervention, to compare the level of pain among children undergoing venipuncture between experimental and control group, to determine association between level of pain and selected demographic variables among children undergoing venipuncture. Methods This was a quasi experimental study of 60 children (30in experimental group and 30in control group) undergoing venipuncture in selected hospitals of Pune city. The FLACC observational pain scale was used to for pain assessment. Experimental group were given passive distraction in the form of cartoon movie and control group were not during venipuncture. Intervention done 5 minute before initiation of procedure (venipuncture) during procedure and till 5 minutes of completion of procedure. Results - mean pain score in experimental group was lower (4.6) than that of the control group (7.7) with the mean difference of 3.1 which was significant as evident from t value of (10) at 0.05 level of significance. Conclusion cartoon movie as a distracter is effective on reducing pain of children undergoing venipuncture.