The effect of dry heat and dry cold application on pain, anxiety and fear levels before blood sample collection in school age children (7-12 years): A randomized controlled study

Background: Blood sampling, which is frequently performed on children admitted to hospital, causes them pain, anxiety and fear. Objectives: The study was carried out to determine the effects of dry heat and dry cold application before blood sampling on pain, anxiety and fear levels in school age children. Methods: The study was conducted between June and January 2021 with a parallel-group randomized controlled experimental design. It was carried out with 117 children who applied to the Pediatric Blood Collection Poly-clinic of a training and research hospital. The children were assigned to dry heat application, dry cold application and control group by simple randomization. Data were collected using the Child-Family Introductory Informa-tion Form, Wong Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBFPS), Child Fear Anxiety Scale (CFAS) and Medical Pro-cedure Fear Scale (MPFS). In the data analysis, descriptive statistics, the Kruskal-Wallis H test, the Dunn test, Yates correction and the Pearson Chi-Square test were used. A level of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: It was found that children who were treated with dry heat and dry cold before blood sampling experienced less pain. The anxiety of the children in the dry heat treatment group was lower than the control group. According to the children's MPFS Operational Fear sub-dimension median scores, procedural fear was found to be lower in the dry heat application group. Practice implications: Pediatric nurses can safely use dry heat and dry cold application in the management of invasive procedure-related pain, and dry heat application in the management of anxiety. Trial registration: This trial is registered with the US National Institutes of Health (ClinicalTrials.gov) under the number NCT05974319.