Individual determinants shaping nurses’ use of distraction techniques in managing children’s acute procedural pain

• Author / Creator

  Olmstead, Deborah L.

• In order to eliminate the unnecessary suffering of children requiring painful procedures to diagnose and treat their illness, management of this pain must be a priority for nurses. The role nurses assume in the current undermanagement of children's pain requires further examination. In the first paper, a comprehensive review of the available literature on pediatric pain management was conducted in order to provide the context in which this issue is situated. The second paper is a qualitative inquiry seeking nurses' accounts of the individual level factors they identify that influence their choices for distraction to manage children's procedural pain. Nurses described the three key determinants of nursing knowledge, experience and relational capacity as influencing their practice. These descriptions provided an extended understanding on nurses' choices for using distraction to manage children's procedure-related pain. Nurses disclosed using distraction for themselves, as well as for the child experiencing a painful procedure.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Nurse management
  • Procedural pain
  • Pediatric acute pain
  • Distraction

• Graduation date

  Spring 2011

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Nursing

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R34W6B

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.