Impacts of kangaroo care which is applied to the infants in neonatal intensive care unit on the infants pain levels

This study is experimentally planned to analyze the impacts of kangaroo care (KC) which is applied to the premature infants stayed in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on reducing the pain occurred while drawing blood from the toe. The population were the premature neonatals and their mothers stayed in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Cukurova University The Faculty of Medicine (ÇÜTF) Balcalı Research and Application Hospital between June 2012–November 2012. The study is done on totally 45 premature infants who stayed anytime between and complied with the case selection criteria. These infants were casually appointed to experimental (n:21) and control groups (n:24). The Premature Infant Pain Profile (PIPP) was utilized oncollecting data on the purpose of assessing behavioural and physiological responses of the infant in the process of survey, video camera, monitor and phlebotomization. The package of Statiatical Package for Social Sciences 18.0 (SPSS) was utilized on the statistical analysis of the data. Categorical measurements were summarized numerically and by percentage; numerical measurements were summarized averagely and by standard deviation. Chi square, Mann Whitney U and T tests were utilized on assessing the data. Most of the studied neonatals were between 32-36 weeks born; %58 of the neonatals in the control group and %67 of the neonatals in the experimental group were girls and both groups were found similar when introductory features of the experimental and control groups were compared. On the study, PIPP score was found similar before the invasive initiative (p=0.897), PIPP score in the experimental group was found statistically significant (p<0.001) compared with the control group during the invasive initiative and PIPP scores were found statistically similar in both groups after the invasive initiative (p=0.195). Consequently; our findings have showed that KC is an effective method on reducing the premature infants' pains in the invasive initiatives and PIPP is effective on assessing the premature infants' pain. Keywords: Pain, kangaroo care, premature, premature infant pain profile, drawing blood from the toe.