Study design
A Quantitative research approach was used in the study.
Participants and recruitment
This study was conducted between May 2019 to February 2021 in a tertiary care Hospital, Karnataka, India. The study participants included 160 mothers (80 interventions; 80 control) of children undergoing Elective surgery. Before starting the study, the ethical permission was obtained from the Institutional Research Committee. Mothers those who accompanied the child for three postoperative days were included in the study. The researcher explained the study to the mothers and informed consent and assent was obtained. The researcher randomly allocated the mothers and children to the intervention and control group. The children of the mothers in the intervention group received age- appropriate distraction interventions. The intervention was provided by the researcher and mothers accompanied the child during the intervention. Children in the post-operative unit were distracted with the help of distraction kit that included picture books, toys, role play cards, activity books and story books). The intervention was provided by the nurse for thirty minutes and the mother accompanied the child during the intervention. Along with the distraction interventions the child also received usual care (Pharmacological treatment). Children in the control group received only the usual care (Pharmacological treatment) for three postoperative days. On the day of discharge, the researcher administered the parent satisfaction scale to the mother of the intervention and control group to assess their satisfaction with pain management interventions.
Data collection measures
Mothers were present along with their children in the paediatric surgical unit for three post-surgical days. The 160 mothers were randomly allocated either to the intervention (80) or control group (80). The researcher was blinded on allocation of the mothers into the intervention and control group. After allocation, the researcher approached the mothers on the day of admission and explained the study process. Informed consent and assent was taken for participation in the study.
On the day of admission, the data on demographic characteristics of the mothers were obtained: age of mother, annual income, education, and occupation of the mother. Parent satisfaction was assessed on the day of discharge using a Likert scale (Parent Satisfaction Scale) developed by the researcher for the study purpose. The scale consisted of 10 items rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree). The Parent Satisfaction Scale has a minimum score of 20 and maximum score of 50. The interpretation of the tool is done on three categories: very satisfied (40-50), moderately satisfied (21-39), and not satisfied (10-20). Higher the scores indicate high level of satisfaction of mothers on pain management interventions. The tool was validated by the experts from the department of pediatric surgery, anaesthesiology, psychology and child health nursing. All the items were clear and no changes were made in the scale. The reliability of the tool was established by administering the tool to 20 mothers. This tool was found to be reliable(r=0.87). Hence, in the present study, this tool was administered among 160 mothers (80 intervention and 80 control). The average time taken by the mothers to complete the tool was 10-15 minutes. All the mothers in the study completed the parent satisfaction tool.
Data analysis
Data obtained from the mothers were coded using SPSS 23.0 version. Demographic characteristics were described by frequency and percentage. One-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) was calculated to identify the statistically significant difference between means. Chi-square was computed to find the association between parent satisfaction and demographic variables.