The effect of play dough activies on pain and anxiety on children before blood collection

This research was carried out as a randomized controlled type experimental study in order to determine the effect of play dough activities before the venipuncture procedure on pain and anxiety in children aged 4-7 years, in Düzce Atatürk State Hospital Blood Collection Unit between November 2019 and April 2020. The sample of the study is consisted of 68 children (experimental group=34; control group=34) who agreed to participate in the study and met the sample selection criteria, according to the result of the power analysis. In data collection, "Introductory Information Form" is used for determining socio-demographic characteristics of children and families, besides, Child Anxiety Scale-State" (CAS-S) for pre-and post-procedure anxiety and "Wong-Baker Facial Pain Rating Scale" (WB-FPRS) for pain level before and after the procedure. Before the venipuncture process, the children in the experimental group played with play dough, while the children in the control group were only given routine venipuncture. The data obtained in the research was analyzed by transferring them to the IBM SPSS Statistics 26 package program. As a result of the independent sample tests, a statistically significant difference was found between the experimental and control groups in terms of CAS and WB-FPRS scores (p<0.05). Accordingly, the CAS and WB-FPRS scores of the children in the experimental group were found to be significantly lower than the ones of the children in the control group. As a result, it was explored that the play dough activities applied before the venipuncture effectively reduced the children's pain and anxiety levels after the venipuncture.