The Effect of Multisensory Stimulation on Baby's Pain and Mother's Anxiety During Heel Blood Collection

Plain-language summary

Newborn screening programs are preventive health services that have a significant place in public health programs in developed and developing countries worldwide. For these scans, heel blood is taken from the newborn, and the heel blood collection procedure applied for diagnostic purposes is one of the most common painful procedures applied to the newborn. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain management may be necessary to reduce and minimize pain during painful procedures in the neonatal intensive care unit. One of the non-pharmacological applications applied during acute procedural pain in the newborn is sensorial saturation, which consists of multisensory stimulation (sensitive touch, massage, auditory, visual, sense of taste, and smell). This study aimed to examine the effect of multisensory stimulation applied by the mother during the heel blood collection procedure in newborns on reducing pain and to evaluate the effects of family-centered practice on the state anxiety of mothers. This study was carried out as a randomized controlled, experimental study. Ethical approval was obtained before starting the study. In addition, written informed consent was obtained from the families of the newborns in the control and intervention groups. The study population consisted of newborns born in a hospital in Turkey between July 2019 and January 2020, and whose heel blood was taken for routine metabolic screening by the Ministry of Health. The sample group consisted of 80 randomly assigned newborns, 40 in the intervention group and 40 in the control group. Newborn mothers in the intervention group gave their babies multisensory stimulation(speech, touch, breastfeeding, eye contact, maternal skin odor) before, during, and after the procedure. The newborns in the control group underwent routine heel blood sampling in the baby room under a radiant heater. The Neonatal Infant Pain Scale (NIPS) was used for pain assessment. The NIPS score was evaluated by the researcher before the procedure, during the procedure, and 1 minute after the procedure. The State Anxiety Inventory was used to measure the mother's anxiety. The state of anxiety of the mothers in each group was evaluated before and after the procedure.

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