A Plunket spokeswoman Jen Riches last week confirmed that Plunket was proposing disestablishing 53 positions in the Central region’s – which covers the North Island south of Auckland – and replacing them with 34 positions. The positions relate to administrative, leadership, and community services roles with Plunket’s government-funded Well Child nursing services not included in the Central region restructuring proposal but the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) says Plunket does propose moving from four clinical services manager (i.e nurse leader) positions to two.
This month Plunket chair Christine Lake has also sent out a public appeal seeking “urgent support to raise $150,000 by 5th March 2018 so Plunket can keep life-changing community programmes running”. She said childcare and parenting groups were not easily accessible in high need communities and Plunket trained and supported volunteers with the skills needed to develop playgroup and manage other programmes that led to “more supportive, connected communities”.
The Central region proposal follows Plunket consolidating its regional societies into a single entity last year. Riches said Plunket was focused on providing a “consistent range of community services” to families across the country including how to “best support consistent and equitable service delivery” in the central region where Plunket would be serving around 19,00 new babies and their families in the coming year.
The proposal is for 53 staff to have their roles disestablished and to be replaced with 34 roles – 18 of these to be re-confirmed roles, 15 contestable roles and one newly created role. Riches said the proposal was “by no means a decision” and there was still some way to go before decisions were made.
Chris Wilson, NZNO’s industrial advisor for the primary health care sector said it was currently in a “robust consultation” with its affected members before making a submission to Plunket. She said a number of the job changes were due to the Central Region proposing reducing the number of operating areas to two. She said this included reducing the number of clinical services managers (nurse leadership positions) from four to two while having the same number of clinical leaders and nurses to manage. The proposal also included reducing the number of administration team leaders from 6 to two and a reduction in administrator roles.
Wilson said it appeared the changes would lead to less people managing more staff in a centralised structure.
“Our initial concerns would therefore be sustainable workload management for the staff affected and equitable access for rural and smaller communities to appropriate Plunket services.”
In late 2016 Plunket voted at its national annual general meeting to consolidate its 14 area societies into a single national charitable trust by the end of 2017 to enable Plunket “to deliver more equitable outcomes for its community services” and manage its property more efficiently. Lake said at the time that while Plunket delivered Well Child services in most part of the country. through its Ministry of Health contracts, its other services – such as parenting education programmes and play groups – were “not being universally provided because of a lack of local volunteers and fundraising”. She said as a charity Plunket relied on the effort and generosity of supporters to keep delivering its services that weren’t funded through government contracts.
NB article updated at 3pm January 29 to include NZNO comment
]]>Hāpai responded to the announcement last week that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford are expecting their first child in June by congratulating them and formally inviting the Prime Minister to receive a traditional flax baby basket for her baby to sleep in.
“Wahakura is a traditional Māori concept but they are used today among Māori and non-Māori parents alike as safe sleep devices,” says Fay Selby-Law, general manager of the National SUDI Prevention Service at Hāpai Te Hauora. “We will present a wahakura to the Prime Minister as a symbol of our support for all parents and tamariki in Aotearoa.”
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Parliament is today to sit under urgency to debate the Families Package (Income Tax and Benefits) Bill. The bill would bring into effect the package announced yesterday that aims to bring 88,000 children out of poverty through a combination of higher Accommodation Supplement changes, more generous Working for Families scheme, a “Best Start” payment for parents of young babies, and a “Winter Warmer” grant for beneficiaries and superannuitants.
Memo Musa, chief executive of the New Zealand Nurses Organisation said nurses had seen an increase of child illness due to poverty and damp, poor living conditions so welcomed the package’s increases – particularly the Winter Energy Payment.
“Increasing money directly to families may well be the difference to having to access a health professional for some illnesses because affording healthier food or extra medicines and adequate, quality clothing can help to prevent illness.”
“Kiwi kids suffering from preventable illnesses are often linked directly to living in poverty. Increasing minimum wage, reduced health check fees, increase in parental leave and the Family Package are all key steps to reducing illness that nurses are saddened to see on a daily basis,” Memo Musa said.
Radha Balakrishnan, Plunket’s chief strategy and performance officer, said with Plunket nurses seeing 9 out of 10 babies born in New Zealand they see first-hand the impact of poverty and poor housing on child health – “particularly on Māori and Pacific communities who bear the brunt of this burden on our children”.
“We welcome Government action to level the playing field, and address the inequity of health and wellbeing outcomes among New Zealand’s tamariki and whanau,” she said. “We will be looking for further action to tackle systemic issues that are having an unacceptable impact on children’s health.”
Paula Bennet, National’s spokesperson for children, described the Government’s package as bluster and said National’s Families Income package was projected to lift 50,000 children out of poverty on April 1 2018 and it had committed to a further package in 2020 that would have had a similar effect.
“Labour has reverted to type by throwing billions of dollars at poorly targeted hand-outs, including over $3000 baby bonuses that go to everyone, irrespective of whether they need it or not, said Bennett. “During our term in Government, the number of kids in material hardship fell by nearly 40 per cent to 135,000 in 2016.
Andrew Becroft, the Children’s Commissioner, described the package as “really positive steps” as raising family incomes, enabling warmer and more support for the first year of a child’s life would contribute to improving outcomes for children.
He said the office would be monitoring whether the projected aim of raising 88,000 children out of poverty by 2021 was successful through its ongoing Child Poverty Monitor (which has just received continued funding from the JR McKenzie Trust for a further three years). “We look forward to seeing the significant improvements in the wellbeing of children that this package promises.”
Associate Professor Susan St John, the economics’ spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Group, welcomed the package as a “long overdue response to the disastrous child poverty experienced since the 1990s”.
“But there are still some complex issues and CPAG would welcome working with Government on ways to simplify and extend the package,” said St John. “We would especially urge the Government to help the very worst-off children who are still excluded from the full package.”
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In the last outbreak from August 2011 to December 2013 about 11,000 cases were notified; there were three deaths of babies and young children and hundreds needed hospital treatment.
Apart from encouraging the immunisation of pregnant women and babies the Ministry of Health is also promoting the vaccination of health staff – particularly amongst those who regularly work with babies, children and pregnant women – because immunity (whether acquired by natural infection or vaccination) wanes over time.
Dr Nikki Turner, the Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), said at present the Ministry of Health’s Immunisation Handbook recommends that midwives, doctors and nurses who regularly work with infants to get a pertussis (whooping cough) booster every 10 years, and this is what IMAC recommends.
Immunity wanes – boosters needed
But she said it also recognised that vaccine immunity wanes earlier than 10 years so some people advise shorter booster intervals for those in contact with very high-risk babies or women; for example, those in neonatal units.
“There is no hard and fast rule, but in high-risk contact situations maybe every five years would be our suggestion, but there is no national or international guidance on what would be the appropriate intervals,” said Turner.
She also pointed out that even when immunity is present an individual can still carry and spread pertussis. “So standard hygiene precautions remain important (such as hand hygiene and covering your cough) and staying away from vulnerable people when unwell.”
The Ministry of Health’s director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said the best way to protect babies from whooping cough is for pregnant women to get their free immunisation between 28 and 38 weeks of pregnancy and to take their baby for free immunisations when they’re six weeks, three months and five months old.
She said any siblings should also be up to date with their immunisations – older children receive free boosters at four and 11 years of age. If people are unsure whether they or their children have been immunised, they can talk to their health practitioner, doctor or nurse.
“On time immunisation is vitally important,” says Dr McElnay. “If immunisation is delayed, babies are vulnerable for longer.”
Turner said pregnant woman are advised to get immunised for each pregnancy because the main purpose of vaccinating in pregnancy was to pass on protective antibodies to the newborn infant. “Antibody levels need to be boosted with every pregnancy to ensure the infant gets adequate protection,” she said.
Turner said that a local reaction (e.g. a sore arm) can be experienced after the vaccine; this is more likely to occur after receiving more doses of toxoid vaccine. Hence, the usual advice is to have the pertussis vaccine 10-yearly unless the health professional or other person was likely to be in contact with high-risk infants, who are at greatest risk of severe pertussis, or was a pregnant woman.
For more information on whooping cough, including videos and interviews with parents whose babies have caught whooping cough, click here.
]]>The just launched Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ child and adolescent asthma guidelines are designed to help nurses, doctors and other health professionals – delivering asthma care in the community to emergency departments – to provide simple, practical and evidence-based guidance for the diagnosis and treatment of asthma in children and adolescents up to 15 years of age.
The new guidelines – developed by a team of health professionals under the guidance of Professor Innes Asher – include a shift from the ‘medical’ focus of the previous guidelines* to taking a holistic look at the ‘big picture’ factors that influence asthma outcomes.
Debbie Rickard, a child health nurse practitioner at Capital & Coast DHB who helped develop the guidelines, said the new guidelines were not just medical and encompassed many other factors for health professionals “such as how to support families to manage their child’s condition, and looking at the big picture of factors that contribute to child asthma, such as housing, environment and barriers to accessing services”.
A quick reference guide to the new Guidelines was published last week in the latest New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ), which said that the new guidelines were informed by recent New Zealand reports describing the growing impact of asthma – especially on children – and the inequities suffered by Māori, Pacific peoples and low-income families.
Lorraine Hetaraka-Stevens, the National Hauora Coalition nurse leader who was also part of the guidelines team, said underpinning the new guidelines was eliminating inequities. She said they included a focus on workforce, systems and broader determinants that impact on asthma, such as income and housing. The guidelines, she believed, also enabled consistent standards of care, which could the work of a wide range of health professionals working in a variety of settings; for example, school-based nurses and rural health professionals.
Dr Stuart Jones, Medical Director of the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ, agreed that addressing issues of social inequities is of paramount importance “if we are going to address the disparities in childhood respiratory illnesses and set all New Zealanders up with good lungs for life”.
“I think every child in New Zealand should have the right to be raised in a warm, dry, well-ventilated house, free of cigarette smoke and have good access to medical care,” said Jones.
David McNamara, respiratory paediatrician at Starship Children’s Health, said the guidelines were an important step in reducing disparities and improving outcomes for children with asthma and their whānau.
“The guidelines address the biggest challenges in asthma management: patient education, follow-up, motivation and improving adherence,” said McNamara. “By focusing on these we hope to lift the health and quality of life of children with asthma and reduce the burden of acute sickness and hospitalisation.”
Click here to download the full 33-page Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ child and adolescent asthma guidelines.
*The new guidelines are a complete update of the Paediatric Society of New Zealand’s Management of Asthma in Children aged 1–15 years, published back in 2005.
]]>The Ministry of Health today released the key indicators from the 2016/2016 survey which showed that 99,000 or 12.3 per cent of children aged 2 to 14 are obese up from 10.7 per cent in the 2015/16 survey and 8.4 per cent a decade ago.
The biggest increase though was in the number of obese pre-schoolers (aged 2-4) which jumped three per cent to 10.5 per cent.
This result reversed a trend of childhood obesity rates starting to stabilise in previous annual surveys, in particular pre-schooler obesity rates had fallen in the 2015/16 survey to 7.3 per cent which had been the lowest rate since the surveys began ten years ago. (A child is classified as obese if they have a BMI equivalent to an adult BMI of 30 or more.) The one positive childhood obesity trend was a stabilising of Pacific childhood obesity rates – while they remained at a high 29.1 per cent this was down on the 29.8 recorded last year.
The statistics are based on face-to-face interviews with adults that were conducted between July 2016 and June 2017. Over 13,000 adults, and the parents or primary caregivers of over 4,000 children took part in the survey which includes weighing and measuring the adults and children to calculate their body mass index (BMI).
Adult obesity results from the 2016-17 survey also showed an increase with 32.2 per cent of adults obese – up on 26.5 per cent in 2006/2007 and slightly up on the 31.6 per cent rate in 2015/16.
The survey showed that while obesity rates continue to rise parents appear not to be concerned about the impact on their children’s health with 98.1 per cent of parents rating their child’s health as good to excellent. Likewise 88.2 per cent of adults rate their own health as good.
The full statistics can be viewed here.
]]>The Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday that Cabinet had agreed to extend the current 18 weeks paid parental leave to 22 weeks from July 1 2018 and to 26 weeks from July 1 2020.
Kerri Nuku, the kaiwhakahaere for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), welcomed the extension of paid leave to 26 weeks (six months) pointing out that breast feeding for the first six months of life is recommended by the World Health Organisation as giving a better start for babies.
She said NZNO was a long-time supporter of extending paid parental leave because nurses and midwives understood the huge impact that family bonding has on a child’s health.
“Vulnerable mums, especially single mums, should be able to return to work when they are ready and this extension gives them a little more time without extra money worries. The bond with baby is so vital and it is a government’s duty to support that,” Nuku said. She said parents and babies benefited, also businesses by keeping loyal and trained staff, and society in general by helping to support New Zealand families.
Extending parental leave was a key pledge on Labour’s 100 Day Plan and supported by all parties in government. Ardern said currently 28,000 parents enjoy 18 weeks of paid parental leave – but that was one of the lowest rates in the OECD. She said the increased support for working families had a net cost of $325 million over four years and was budgeted for in its fiscal plan.
“We want children to have the best start in life,” said Ardern. “Evidence shows that having a parent at home as long as possible to care for a child provides a huge benefit for that child’s development.”
Nuku said NZNO would also like to see the barrier removed of having to work an average of 10 hours a week before you can access paid parental leave.
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Chief executive Andrew Lesperance said this would give more than 1700 teenagers living in Hastings and Havelock North free access to see their doctor, nurse practitioner or nurse.
“Offering free doctor visits for young teenagers is an important step towards youth establishing good long-term healthcare relationships which will help ensure they look after themselves now and in the future,” he said.
“As the region’s largest primary health provider, we recognise the leadership role we play in delivering services which help towards improving the lives and well-being for all those living in our local communities.”
The free visits for under 18s is in partnership with the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, which became the first DHB in the country to provide extra funding beyond the Government’s policy which was extending to under 14s.
“Along with improving access to health services, we are also focused on establishing very good, relatable relationships between young teenagers and their healthcare team of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and others,” Mr Lesperance said.
“We want to do as much as possible to help encourage youth to be able to talk openly with their doctor and nurses about their health and we welcome the ability to enable this to happen by removing financial barriers.”
Keeping up with the digital age, all patients over the age of 16 could sign up to use The Hastings Health Centre’s web portal “Manage My Health” which improves communication and access to patient information, along with being able to book appointments online.
“Staying connected with youth through the digital world they live in today is another great way to engage with them to ensure they look after their health and stay well,” Mr Lesperance said.
“Making sure primary and community health services are far more accessible is a real focus for us here at The Hastings Health Centre, and technology is going to play an ever-increasing role in this going forward.”
]]>It was the 1980s and I was doing a clinical placement at the former psychiatric and intellectual disability hospital north of Dunedin as part of my Comprehensive Diploma.
I remember the day so clearly as it was incredibly sad. The people we were caring for, some were adults, were changed and fed and put on mattresses on the floor with no stimulation and little interpersonal interaction.
I was reminded of this experience recently when I watched an online video where the mothers of two young men – who in the past may have been in a setting like the ‘Babies’ villa – talk about their sons being the first generation growing up outside institutionalised care (www.complexcaregroup.org.nz/connect/our-stories).
The two mothers interviewed share very moving accounts of their lives caring for their children. While it seems, from my brief experience of institutionalised care, to be much better for the child/young person to be in a home environment, I can also appreciate the stress on the parents and family is extreme. No parent of children without such complex needs can watch these interviews and not be humbled at the commitment of these parents and the consuming nature of the care they must provide.
The support offered to Canterbury families with children and young people with high level, complex, health-related needs was the subject of a 2015 study led by Nurse Maude.
The goal of the mixed methods research study was to consider what services would meet these needs. The feedback from focus groups make this study’s report as moving to read as watching the videos from the Complex Care Group.
Sleep deprivation, strained relationships within the family, a complex and poorly understood funding environment, and a lack of attention available for other children’s needs are just a few of the issues raised. It appears no system is without its issues. I’m sure that going back to the big institutional model is a move few families would consider, but the lack of respite care makes life hard for these families.
The needs of the families in Canterbury echoed the needs of families in research studies from similar countries. One aspect highlighted is that families require flexible services as their needs can change rapidly. Another is that families prefer in-home respite care, but this is seldom available due to the difficulty in finding suitable carers, other than willing family members. While some families have support from grandparents, there are limitations in the services that ageing parents can provide. Parents reported their informal support services were highly variable and significantly strained.
The study recommended that a Respite Care Connections Service be established, with the key aims of:
The tangible result was that in 2016 the Complex Children’s Respite Care Connections Service (CCRCCxS) was established and Nurse Maude appointed a co-ordinator to achieve those aims.
I spotted the service’s ad in a local paper seeking volunteers ready to work alongside parents of children with complex health needs.
Two to four hours a week was the time commitment suggested, and the range of activities described as “doing anything from babysitting the child with complex needs to taking other children to sporting commitments”.
As a newcomer to Christchurch at the time, I thought I had some time to offer. They weren’t looking for nurses, so I wasn’t thinking that I would be doing anything clinical. I was interviewed, police-checked, had a day of orientation with the five other volunteers in the first intake and was then introduced to the family I support.
I visit the family most weeks and it has become a highlight of my week. Just as nursing is a privilege, it is likewise a privilege to be able to go into a family’s home, even if you are there to help in the most basic of ways.
Seeing first-hand the psychological, physical, and emotional toll on the primary carers of children with complex needs has also been a revelation for me. The mother of my family has a calendar constantly full of appointments she must get her child to or visitors coming to their home.
The moving story she tells of the journey to diagnosis of her child’s complex condition is difficult to hear as a health professional as she was not always listened to. The services they receive now seem to be very responsive to their needs. Her child is regularly admitted to hospital with the flow-on effects for the other children and family members this involves.
As a nurse, working in the education setting, I did not appreciate all that goes on for families in this position. I also realise I cannot fully relay its reality to my students.
Some of the most moving moments have been small. Last week the child nodded at me when I asked her if she was okay and I realised she does understand me. When the cutest little wheelchair arrived, the mother told me she had shed a tear, as it is one thing to know your child can’t walk and another thing to have it put in front of you so graphically.
While I don’t have to flush the child’s MIC-KEY button after a tube feed, I do if we are out walking so she can get out of the wheelchair to play. This isn’t an activity specific to nurses, but I am sure I feel more comfortable doing it because of my nursing experience.
For this family, the time I spend with the child allows the mother to do everyday jobs like grocery shopping. The idea of doing anything that might seem relaxing to me doesn’t even register with her as the care of her family is all-consuming. It is relaxing for her to be able to do the groceries alone.
The first group of volunteers has been followed by more and, in a report done this year, 10 families are receiving volunteer support.
Nursing is a great background for work with families of children with complex care, but it’s not essential. I have found flexibility, being open to other families functioning differently from your own, and a bag of paper, pens and bubble mix are all essential.
A new co-ordinator has recently come on board and she is keen to hear from anyone in the area who thinks they have time to offer. If you would like more information, please contact
[email protected] as more volunteers are needed.
Author: Dr Chris Moir is a lecturer and clinical co-ordinator for the University of Otago’s Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies.
]]>Injections, intravenous (IV) lines, blood tests and implanted ports can lead, not surprisingly, to children being anxious and fearful about needles. Child health nurses muster all their skills to reduce the risk of distress – using the right words, play and distraction techniques, the support of the children’s caregivers and appropriate pain relief.
The ‘go-to-treatment’ for topical pain relief, says Rachel Wilson, a clinical nurse specialist at Christchurch Hospital’s Children’s Haematology and Oncology Centre (CHOC), has been topical anaesthetic creams, but they come with their own side effects and complications. And, as she told the recent Clinical Nurse Specialist Society conference, for some children the most distressing part of a procedure can be removing the dressing holding the anaesthetic cream in place. Or if a child is needing urgent intravenous fluids or medication, there may not be enough time for the anaesthetic cream to do its job, resulting in a painful experience for the child.
The research literature shows that children who are exposed to poorly managed and painful healthcare procedures are more likely to demonstrate increased pain perception, pain behaviours and medical fear later in life, says Wilson. That is why her eye was drawn to an item in the Children’s Healthcare Australasia (CHA) newsletter about a simple pain-numbing device being used at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne for more than 5,000 intravenous (IV) cannulations, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from patients.
Called CoolSense, the small handheld device was first developed for dulling the pain of Botox injections and the like in the cosmetic sector. The device has a temperature-controlled head that cools and numbs the injection site. “It takes only 10 seconds to work before the injection can be given,” says Wilson. “It is simple, it is allergy-free and it is immediate – a no-brainer.”
And, unlike using an ice pack on a wriggling child, the device’s small round head enabled a precise and controlled numbing of the injection site area. Wilson says that, also surprisingly, despite the sudden chill, using the device didn’t cause vasoconstriction of a child’s vein so veins still ‘popped up’ and were accessible.
So with the support of CHOC charge nurse manager Chrissy Bond, it was decided to trial CoolSense on CHOC patients in May 2016, using the numbing applicator not only for IV cannulation but also venepuncture, accessing ports and giving subcutaneous and intramuscular injections. The CHOC nurses were trained in using CoolSense and, depending on the age of the child, prepared the children for the sudden cold of the device by talking about it being like a frosty Canterbury morning or giving younger children a lick of an iceblock.
“Very quickly the CoolSense became known as the magic wand,” says Wilson. “One of our patients – she loved it – said the only thing that was wrong with it [the ‘magic wand’] was that it wasn’t pink and it didn’t have ‘bling’.”
The trial was not without its hiccups: a week in there were reports of skin tissue injuries so the team stopped using the devices to investigate. They discovered there was an undetected fault with one device, which meant the cold metal applicator head (or pin) had shifted
and was no longer touching the alcohol gel pad.
“It is the alcohol that protects the skin from the very cold [applicator] head that you are pushing against the skin [for 10 seconds],” says Wilson. “So we were, in fact, causing [ice] burns to these children.” This led to refining the procedures and updating the education package to ensure that nurses checked there was no gap between the metal head and the gel pad, recorded which device they used, used a watch to time the 10-second application, and the devices were not stored in a freezer colder than -10oC.
The team then reintroduced CoolSense and, the second time around, the ‘magic wand’ was rated a winner in a survey of CHOC parents (31 respondents or 80 per cent of CHOC children in trial). More than 83 per cent of respondents believed that CoolSense was more effective than the creams; more than 90 per cent agreed that using the numbing devices saved time; about 85 per cent believed it worked well in numbing their child’s skin before needle insertion; and 87 per cent would recommend the device to other parents.
Wilson says another plus for the numbing applicator was the potential for cost savings.
“Even though as nurses we like to pretend we don’t want to know about it [money], it is actually very important as we all work with a budget that is limited.”
She says the topical anaesthetic creams they traditionally used took an hour for optimal effect and cost between $6.75 and $9 per 5g tube, leading to an annual bill for Canterbury DHB’s child health services in excess of $60,000.
In comparison, a CoolSense applicator costs about $160 and each device comes with an alcohol cartridge lasting 350 applications. Wilson says the cost of the device and replacement cartridges average out at 22 cents per use – so potentially there could be a saving of $8,780 per 1,000 uses.
CoolSense training is now a routine part of orientation for new nursing and medical staff in child health, says Wilson. The numbing device was also being used beyond child health services in other hospital areas where children are treated, including intensive care, radiology, emergency and operating theatres.
The innovation was the runner-up in the improved quality and safety experience category of Canterbury DHB’s Innovation Awards last year and Wilson and the Child Health team have also presented their findings across the Tasman, as well as at the recent Australasian Nurse Educators Conference.
“We are providing the evidence and getting it out there for people to show how this very little piece of technology can change outcomes for children,” says Wilson. She says pushing for innovations and implementing something new did take some courage and tenacity.
“You have to have passion for it – people ask me do I actually have shares in CoolSense because I keep going on and on … and I still am,” laughs Wilson. “But it just goes to show that small innovations can grow into evidence-based best practice, delivering improved health experience outcomes for our patients.”
And maybe fewer children will now have memories of their time in hospital as human pincushions.
The initial research into using CoolSense at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital was recently published in the journal Anaesthesia and Intensive Care by paediatric anaesthetist Philip Ragg.
The prospective observational audit of 100 children and adolescents (aged 6-18 years) looked at the patient and carer satisfaction rates with using the device and how effective it was in reducing the pain of intravenous cannulation.
The study found that 94 per cent of patients rated the pain during cannulation as less than or equal to three on a numerical pain rating scale of zero to 10.
Patient and carer satisfaction with the device and cannulation success rates were also high; 66 per cent of patients and 82 per cent of carers ‘really liked’ the device and 28 per cent of patients and 12 per cent of carers ‘liked’ it. Ninety-five percent of patients were cannulated on the first attempt.
The article concluded that the device appeared to be a useful tool that provided effective analgesia for intravenous cannulation in children with minimal complications.
Source: Ragg P et al. (2017) A clinical audit to assess the efficacy of the Coolsense® Pain Numbing Applicator for intravenous cannulation in children. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 45(2)
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