Background: The phenomenon of forceful physical restraint in pediatric care is an ethical issue because it confronts professionals with the dilemma of using force for the child’s best interest. This is a paradox. The perspective of healthcare professional working in pediatric wards needs further in-depth investigations. Purpose: To explore the perspectives and behaviors of healthcare professionals toward forceful physical restraint in pediatric care. Methods: This qualitative ethnographic study used focus groups with purposeful sampling. Thirty volunteer healthcare professionals (nurses, hospital aids, physiotherapists, and health educators) were recruited in five pediatric facilities in four hospitals around Paris, France, from March to June 2013. The data were processed using NVIVO software (QSR International Ltd. 1999–2013). The data analysis followed a qualitative methodological process. Ethical Considerations: The research was conducted in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was collected systematically from participants. Findings: This study provides elements to help understand why restraint remains common despite its contradiction with the duty to protect the child and the child’s rights. All participants considered the use of forceful physical restraint to be a frequent difficulty in pediatrics. Greater interest in the child’s health was systematically used to justify the use of force, with little consideration for contradictory or ethical aspects. Raising the issue of forceful restraint always triggered discomfort, unease and an outpour of emotions among healthcare professionals. The findings have highlighted a form of hierarchy of duties that give priority to the execution of the technical procedure and legitimize the use of restraint. Professionals seemed to temporarily suspend their ability to empathize in order to apply restraint to carry out a technical procedure. This observation has allowed us to suggest the concept of “transient empathic blindness.” Conclusion: Using physical restraint during pediatric care was considered a common problem by participants. This practice must be questioned, and professionals must have access to training to find alternatives to strong restraint. Conceptualizing this phenomenon with the concept of “transient empathic blindness” could help professionals understand what happens in their minds when using forceful restraint.

Numerous behavioral pain measures have been validated for young children, but none is appropriate to assess pain in emergency departments (EDs), where caregivers need a simple, easily completed scale. Our objective was to elaborate and validate a tool, relevant in any painful situation, with agitation or prostration, and for any age under 7 years. Five items (scored 0 to 3) were developed by pediatric pain and emergency caregivers. The new scale, called EVENDOL, was tested at children's arrival and after analgesics, at rest, and during mobilization. The validation study included 291 children from birth to 7 years old in 4 French EDs, and independent observations by the ED nurse and a researcher. The Cronbach coefficient was excellent (0.83 to 0.92). Construct validity was demonstrated by a decrease in scores after nalbuphine: 8.14 to 3.62 of 15 at rest (P<.0001), 11.87 to 6.65 at mobilization (P = .0011); by good correlations between EVENDOL and nurse or researcher numerical scores: 0.79 to 0.92 (P<.0001); by good correlations between children's self-assessment scores and EVENDOL in children ages 4 to 7 (0.64 to 0.93). Discriminant validity with tiredness, anxiety, and hunger was good. Interrater reliability was excellent between nurses and researcher (weighted kappa 0.7 to 0.9), and in a group of 6 nurses (simultaneous assessment of 122 videos). The treatment threshold was determined at 4 of 15. EVENDOL has excellent validity and can be used for all children under age 7 in EDs, for any age and any pain, acute as well as more prolonged.

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This review aimed to identify the potential role of integrative medicine in interventional oncology. The music therapy; stress management techniques; guided imagery, including virtual reality; clinical hypnosis; and digital sedation may all be efficient on anxiety and pain during procedures performed in interventional oncology. Beyond pharmacological sedation, the implementation of integrative medicine to interventional oncology may, therefore, improve the support and care of cancer patients, which may further create a virtuous alliance.

Purpose Restraint is often used when administering procedures to children. However, no metrologically scale to measure the restraint intensity had yet been validated. This study validated the metrological criteria of a scale measuring the restraint intensity, Procedural Restraint Intensity in Children (PRIC), used during procedures in children. Design and methods The PRIC scale performance was measured by a group of 7 health professionals working in a children's hospital, by watching 20 videos of health care procedures. This group included 2 physicians, 1 pediatric resident, and 4 nurses. The intra-class correlation coefficients were calculated to evaluate the inter-rater and test-retest reliability and the construct validity with the correlation between PRIC scale and a numerical rating scale. Results One hundred and forty measurements were made. Inter-rater and test-retest correlation coefficients were 0.98 and 0.98, respectively. The 2 scales were positively correlated with a Spearman coefficient of 0.93. Conclusions This study validated the Procedural Restraint Intensity in Children (PRIC) scale in metrological terms with some limitation. However, there is not gold standard scale to precisely validate the reliability of this tool and this study has been conducted in “experimental” conditions. Nevertheless, this is the first scale measuring the intensity of physical restraint with a metrological validation. The next step will be to validate it in real clinical situations.