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The Use of Verbal and Tactile Comfort to Alleviate Distress in Young Hospitalized Children
Author(s) -
Triplett June L.,
Arneson Sara W.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
research in nursing and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1098-240X
pISSN - 0160-6891
DOI - 10.1002/nur.4770020104
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , nonverbal communication , distress , psychology , significant difference , clinical psychology , medicine , developmental psychology , psychiatry
This exploratory study was designed to observe distressed children's responses to verbal and tactile comfort measures. A convenience sample of 63 children between 3 days and 44 months old was drawn from a pediatric unit of a large midwestern hospital. On a random basis, one group of children received verbal, comfort measures for 5 minutes or until they quieted, whichever came first. At the end of 5 minutes, tactile comfort was added if the children were still distressed. The other group received simultaneous tactile‐verbal comfort from the beginning. One hundred interventions were carried out on the 63 children. Forty interventions were initially verbal and 60 were tactile‐verbal. Among the verbal group, 7 of the interventions were successful in quieting the children as compared to 53 successes of 60 interventions in the tactile‐verbal group. This was a highly significant difference. Verbal interventions were more successful for children over 1 year old and tactile comfort was least effective with children in the 13 to 18 month age group. No differences were noted in terms of sex, presence of equipment including restraints, diagnosis, and recency of last feeding.