INJECTIONS CAN HURT! Representations of pain school age children, who underwent venipuncture
Abstract
Introduction: Pain is a part ofhuman nature and is an unalienable part of our existence. It is understood as a universal experience, with an early beginning, in each person, and it gans heterogeneity from social configurations and varying intensity. As an untransferrableexperience, it marks the construction of the psychological and social person in various ways. For children, pain is a common and disturbing experience that is sometimes underestimated in health contexts.
Methodology: This exploratory study is of a mixed nature, which was based on the theory of social representations, aims to dentify the representation associated to pain, in school age children submitted to venous puncture and to the degree ofpain associated to venous puncture. Therefore, the free association of words technique was applied using two stimulus questions: «Pain makes me think about…», the needle prick makes me feel…», and the numerical scale of pain evaluation, to forty three children with ages between six and twelve years old, who were hospitalized in Lisbon’s Health Sub-region. The data have been analyzed using SPAD-T (factorial analysis of simple correspondence) and SPSS (descriptive statistics) software.
The Results show that for those children pain is a factor which arouses suffering and is associated, by children, to physical manifestations, such as crying and to feelings expressed in the presence of pain, like fear. This procedure provokes fear and anxiety in hospitalized children. The degree of pain associated to venous puncture changes with factors like age and mainly with previous experience.
In Conclusion, venipuncture is a painful procedure and according to the children who participated in the study, it causes fear and anxiety. However, many avoided suggestive feelings of pain, because they were ashamed to be considered weaker or deem it a necessary pain; hence the fact that some children associate pain and the need to have the necessary courage to support it.
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