Nurses' and Doctors' Understanding and Experiences of Using Distraction with Children during Procedures

Abstract

One of the key aims of health professionals is to minimise the distress and uneasiness that children feel during procedures and investigations. A key to doing this is the use of distraction. Despite a large body of research and literature on the usefulness of distraction and the positive impact it has for children there is little evidence as to when, why, and what is used by staff in busy wards and departments. There is very little research or evidence that informs what happens in the natural setting of a clinical workplace. The majority of research and evidence on its usefulness has been carried out in research settings, with time, equipment and instruction available to staff. The aim of this research was to find out what are nurses' and doctors' understandings and experiences of using distraction with children during procedures. A postal survey of 110 nurses and doctors across a general Emergency Department and inpatient children's wards of a large tertiary teaching hospital was undertaken. Forty-five (41%) people responded to the survey consisting of 36 nurses and 9 doctors. The findings suggest that there is not only, at times, a lack of knowledge and experience in the use of distraction, but also a lack of understanding by some about what it is, when to use it, and for whom it works. Findings indicate that an individual's profession, past experience or length of time working with children has no impact on their use of distraction. Some staff felt that distraction is of benefit to all children and use it all the time, while others feel it is ineffective in certain age groups, particularly in the under one year olds and the 11-16 year old age groups. A variety of distraction techniques were used by the staff which included, bubbles verbal interactions and music. Results from the survey yielded some interesting assumptions by staff and points for discussion. However along with answering questions on distraction, questions were raised which would be worthy of investigation in the future. The main benefit of this research has been to identify a deficiency in the understanding of distraction and this has opened up possibilities for education that can now be implemented.