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Distraction has been shown to be an effective technique for managing pain in children; however, few investigations have examined the utility of this technique with infants. The goal of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of movie distraction in reducing infants' immunization distress. Participants were 136 infants (range = 1 to 21 months; M = 7.6 months, SD = 5.0 months) and their parents, all of whom were recruited when presenting for routine vaccinations. The parent-child dyads were randomly assigned to either a Distraction or Typical Care control condition. Infant and adult behaviors were assessed using a visual analog scale and a behavioral observation rating scale. Results indicated parents in the Distraction group engaged in higher rates of distraction than those in the Typical Care group, whereas there was no difference in the behavior of nurses in the Distraction and Typical Care groups. In addition, infants in the Distraction group displayed fewer distress behaviors than infants in the Typical Care group both prior to and during recovery from the injection. Findings suggest that a simple and practical distraction intervention can provide some distress relief to infants during routine injections.Keywords: Acute pain; Distraction; Infants; Behavioral approaches; Immunizations Randomized Clinical Trial of Distraction for Infant Immunization Pain A surge of research has revealed that infants experience pain similarly, if not more intensely, than adults (Porter et al., 1999). If untreated, pain can result in negative, long-term repercussions (Taddio, 1999;Young, 2005). The most common painful events during infancy are immunizations, which typically are conducted without pain management (Porter et al., 1997;Felt et al., 2000). Nonpharmacologic pediatric pain management (i.e., cognitive-behavioral intervention) has few to no side-effects, is inexpensive and easy to use, and has been deemed "empirically supported" (Powers, 1999). These interventions typically include breathing retraining, relaxation, imagery, coping skills training, rehearsal, and reinforcement (Blount et al., 2003). They are not appropriate for infants as they require a degree of cognitive capacity not yet developed in infants.A promising intervention that does not require advanced cognitive skills is distraction.Distraction is a potent anxiety and pain management tool for children's pain (for reviews, see Kleiber and Harper, 1999;Piira et al., 2002;DeMore and Cohen, 2005) but has received little evaluation in infants.Two treatment studies have examined distraction pain management for infants. Cohen (2002) evaluated movie distraction for 2-month-olds to 3-year-olds receiving immunizations.Distraction was found to lower children's distress during the post-injection recovery phase but not during the anticipatory or procedural phases. In addition, results were demonstrated only on observational measures-treatment effects were not found on parent-or nurse-reports. More recently, Cramer-Berness and Friedman (2005) compare...

This study revealed that vapocoolant is not an effective pain management intervention for children's intramuscular injections.

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Late adolescence and early adulthood is a time when people establish many of their life-style behaviors. Thus, in order to promote optimal health, it is important to identify factors predictive of young adults' healthcare behavior. This study evaluated the relationship between measures of childhood healthcare experience, healthcare attitudes, and optimism with young adults' healthcare behavior in a sample of college students (n = 100). Results suggested that prior healthcare experience, attitudes about healthcare, and optimism are associated with current healthcare behavior. In addition, the relation between childhood healthcare experience and current healthcare behavior was moderated by optimism, such that those who reported both more negative childhood healthcare experiences and low levels of optimism reported the least adaptive healthcare behaviors and those who reported the most positive childhood healthcare experience and the highest levels of optimism reported the most adaptive healthcare behavior.