A study to assess the effectiveness of manual pressure on lumbar region to reduce pain during Intra Muscular Injection among Infants

Pain is an undesirable tactile and emotional experience related with real or potential tissue harm. Pain prompts people to seek health care more often than any other symptom. It is one of the most important areas of care because people cannot function fully when they are in pain. Pain prompts people to seek health care more often than any other symptom. Painful procedures in the hospital are blood collection, intramuscular injection and intravenous injection etc. this procedural pain is relieved by non pharmacological measures. Procedural pain is the most common cause for pain during provision of nursing care. So as the part of nursing profession, it is our responsibility to use effective strategies to reduce procedural pain. Especially in infant’s routine immunization, bruises and childhood illness mean that pain is a part of everyday experiences of all children and infants. Because infants cannot describe their pain and emotions, it is important to observe the behavioural response of the children to assess the pain. So the present study is done to determine the effectiveness of manual pressure on lumbar region to reduce pain during intramuscular injection among infants in selected hospital, Thiruvalur. Quantitative approach with quasi experimental design was adopted to conduct this study with 60 infants who were selected with purposive sampling technique. The data was collected using structured questionnaire to assess the demographic variable and FLACC pain rating scale for assessing the pain level. The results of the study are out of 60 samples (56.6%) had moderate pain and (43.4%) had mild pain in the experimental group.