Tori Etheridge: As both a chronic pain expert and parent, I know how that story typically ends: disheartened health-care providers, emotionally spent parents and a terrified child who likely won’t ever want to face another needle again. It doesn’t have to be this way
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I recently went for blood work. As a health-care provider, blood draws are nothing new to me. Still, I wouldn’t say they’re my idea of a good time.
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What I heard that day, as I entered the clinic, was both familiar and unsettling. I heard a young child screaming, panicked and in tears, being held down as their parents tried to comfort them while sympathetic but determined clinic staff worked quickly to draw blood.
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“It won’t hurt,” they repeated.
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Sunrise
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As both a chronic pain expert and parent, I unfortunately know how that story typically ends: disheartened health-care providers, emotionally spent parents and a terrified child who likely won’t ever want to face another needle again.
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And yet, scenes like this are still treated as the status quo and simply a necessary part of delivering health care to children.
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It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Needle procedures, including vaccinations and blood draws, are part of many children’s earliest interactions with the health-care system. With school-entry vaccinations and influenza and RSV immunization season approaching, many children across Canada will undergo needle procedures in the coming weeks and months. These moments matter, not only because of the protection vaccines provide, but because they can shape how a child experiences health care for years to come.
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For too many children, these early health-care experiences can be painful and distressing. Evidence shows these kinds of encounters don’t simply fade away; they can inform a person’s response to future medical encounters, well into adulthood. Long-term consequences can include needle phobia, health care avoidance and vaccine hesitancy. Decades of research and organizations like Solutions for Kids in Pain, or SKIP, have highlighted this very issue.
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Conversely, managing a child’s pain, fear and anxiety early can help to improve their comfort and support their adaptive coping over time.
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Approaches to reduce children’s pain and fear during needle procedures and beyond are well established and supported by strong evidence. Resources such as SKIP’s procedural pain management tool kit and the national pediatric pain management standard provide practical guidance for putting that evidence into practice.
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Yet, these practices are still not consistently part of routine care. Nurses, health-care providers and parents are doing their best, but success too often depends on individual knowledge and effort rather than co-ordinated, system-wide support.
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The good news is that many of these approaches are simple and low-cost: Clear, child-friendly explanations, emotional validation, comfortable positioning, distraction techniques and topical anesthetics such as numbing cream can all make a meaningful difference in a child’s experience.
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When I took my own five-year-old son for blood work, I put these approaches into practice.
