The effect of gentle human touch during endotracheal suctioning on procedural pain response in preterm infant admitted to neonatal intensive care units: a randomized controlled crossover study

Abstract

Background: Neonates in the neonatal intensive care unit are frequently subjected to painful procedures. Non-pharmacological pain control techniques are useful for reducing procedural pain. Touch as one of the aspects of developmental care used to reduce neonatal pain. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of gentle human touch during endotracheal suctioning on procedural pain response in preterm neonates.

Methods: This was a clinical trial study with a crossover design. The study was conducted in a level III NICU in a hospital, affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences. Thirty-four neonates were enrolled in this study based on inclusion criteria. The samples were randomly received a sequence of suctioning with/without or suctioning without/with gentle human touch. Preterm Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) was used to collect the data. SPSS version 22 for Windows (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for statistical analysis.

Results: 85.3% of neonates experienced moderate and 8.8% severe pain during suctioning without intervention, and only 64.7% of them experienced moderate and 2.9% severe pain during suctioning with intervention. The results of the paired t-test show that there is a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of pain in nonintervention and intervention cases (p < .002), and the mean pain score substantially reduced in cases with intervention.

Conclusions: Results from this study showed that the pain due to suctioning procedure is considerably reduced by applying Gentle Human Touch. And nurses can use this method as one of the non-pharmacological methods of pain management.

Keywords: Gentle human touch; endotracheal suction; preterm neonate; procedural pain.