Effectiveness of Helfer’s Skin Tap Technique Versus Routine Technique on Pain Reduction among Patient’s Receiving Intramuscular Injections

Abstract

Background: Pain is an affliction feeling often caused by exaggerated or injurious stimuli because it is a complex and subjective phenomenon. Pain is a horrible sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from injuriously situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most of the time pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease. Material and method: A true experimental pre-test and post-test control group design was used. The sample was consisted of 60 patients receiving IM injection selected using simple random sampling technique. Reliability of the tool was assessed by using the Cronbach’s Alpha method. The correlation coefficient was 0.800. Conclusion: Based on the analysis of the findings of the study, the following inferences were drawn. There was a significant reduction in pain among patients after administration of Helfer’s skin tap technique. Thus it proved to be an effective treatment for pain. Therefore, this intervention should be promoted as an institutional policy and implemented as a routine care for all patients following IM injection for effective management of pain.