Discuss about the Reduction Of Pain During Immunization By Administration Of Oral Glucose.

1. The unpleasant nature of the pain associated with childhood immunization is the main concern in the study. Pain causes distress, anxiety and fear among children and their parents during immunization. These negatively affect adherence to immunization schedules making them skip some vaccinations. In addition, the fear and anxiety negatively impact the health-seeking behaviour in children both when they are still young and when they grow up into adults (McNair, (2013). Needle phobia is just one of the results of the pain associated with the immunization procedures (McMurty et al. 2015).
2. Majority of the studies carried out to address the same issue did not show any Significant differences when Oral sucrose solution was used before immunization procedures and when it was not used (Dilli, 2009). The results obtained from these studies pointed out a reduction in crying time of infants under oral sucrose. The results were however not deemed significant owing to the lower concentrations of the sucrose solutions used and the small sample sizes used.
3. The study is important and significant in establishing a solution to the pain that accompanies immunization. The study seeks a lasting solution that will see improved adherence to immunization schedules by infants with the help of their parents, and improve their health seeking behaviour.
4. Overview of the research design
5. The main aim of the research was to ascertain whether administering 2 ml of a 25% sucrose or a 75% sucrose solution reduces the crying time of infants and an established pain scale. The study was to establish whether an oral sucrose solution has analgesic properties to infants and if there are, what concentration is required for optimal effect.
6. A semi-experimental research design was employed in this study. Also called a field experiment, it’s a design that examines an intervention (administration of oral sucrose solutions in this case) in a real-life situation as opposed to laboratory experiments.
7. The main characteristics of a semi-experimental research design (field experiment) include:
8. It examines interventions in the natural world like administration of oral sucrose to infants to observe its effect on pain.
9. Subjects or participants are generally randomized just like in laboratory experiments.

• The design offers a higher external validity because results are obtained from the real world.

1. The design also suffers a likelihood of contamination since it’s more difficult to control variables with precision in the field.
2. The design chosen has the ability to yield results from administration of the oral sucrose solutions to infants, this being a field experiment. It’s also best suited in comparing the results obtained from participants under different concentrations of sucrose owing to its ability to randomize the participants. It enabled the researchers to analyze the analgesic properties of sucrose under different concentrations and when it was not used.
3. Sampling
4. The infants who participated in the study had the following characteristics:
5. All infants who participated in the study were born at term
6. They were born with a normal birth weight

• They were otherwise healthy with no other preexisting health conditions

1. The had routine standard child care
2. They were aged between sixteen and nineteen months
3. Six hundred and ninety-four healthy children and infants who were receiving regular vaccinations at the health centre were chosen and randomized. However, only 537 infants had their results analyzed. The criteria that were used to include them in the study and leave 157 out was based on whether the infants were born of normal birth weight, born at term, healthy and had received only routine good child care. The 157 infants did not meet one or more of the above four criteria.
4. It is important to have all the above criteria identified recruiting participants to avoid recording and analyzing results from unqualified subjects. It’s also not necessary to waste time and resources on participants whose results will be affected by other variables hence yielding invalid results that cannot be used to make generalizations. This also to make sure that recruits are representative of the general population.
5. Simple random sampling is used to group the participants into three categories. The first category was given 25% sucrose solutions, the second group 75% sucrose solutions and the last group, a sterile water solution. The third group was, therefore, the control group.
6. The sampling technique (simple random sampling) used ensured there was no bias in selecting participants who received the sterile water or the different concentrations of sucrose solutions. Every subject had an equal chance of falling into any group. This was appropriate in making valid conclusions about the analgesic properties of oral sucrose.
7. Data collection
8. The data in the study was collected by videotaping. The videos recorded were later analyzed to extract the ‘crying time” of every participant. The duration of crying from the infants was then recorded in tables according to their respective groups. The ages and genders of the infants had been recorded earlier before the immunization procedures began.
9. Mothers sat with their infants, holding them with their hands. Nurses handled them as usual. They ensured the infants were fully awake as the procedure was being carried out. The nurse administered the 2 ml of the random solution that had been prepared earlier by a pharmacist. Two minutes later, the oral polio vaccine was administered first followed by the other injectable vaccines in the left and right deltoid areas. The whole procedure was recorded on video.
10. Videotaping was the perfect procedure for recording data in this study. It’s more accurate to measure the crying times on video record since a computer can be used to improve accuracy. It would have been tedious for a human to measure the duration of crying with a stop-watch which is subject to human error. This fits a study aimed to obtain and compare the crying times of infants as a measure of pain reduction during immunization.
11. The advantages of videotaping were that it reduced the errors that could have resulted from manually obtaining crying times, the method was suitable for obtaining information from infants without interfering with them and it was also able to store the information for future reference at the same time. The method is, however, costlier and requires some expertise to record and extract information from it (Albuquerque, 2014).
12. Alternative methods that the researchers could have chosen include voice recording and observation as opposed to video recording.
13. Data analysis and results
14. The data collected was recorded in tables and subjected to statistical analysis. Various tests such as the mean crying times, mean age and variance tests were done on the results and recorded side by side for the three groups.
15. Statistical analysis of the figures obtained in the tables was the most appropriate way of analyzing the data. Researchers were able to obtain mean crying times and compare them to the three groups. This being a quantitative steady a statistical quantitative analysis method was justified.
16. The researchers reported that their analysis was trustworthy since they used basic proven scientific methods to analyze. With the proper analysis and high significance that was obtained from the study analysis, and how correctly the standard procedures were followed during the study, the researchers concluded that the study was rigorous.
17. The researchers described the results as having a high statistical significance. This is due to a larger sample size that was used compared to the previous studies.  
18. These results can be generalized in several other populations or settings. These include pediatric departments in other hospitals with infants aged 16 to 19 years and other immunization centres across the world. This is because the results were representative of the rest of the infants within the same age bracket.

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