Utilization of Local Anesthetic Medications in Pediatric Patients prior to Venipuncture for Blood Draw or Intravenous Medication Administration

Abstract

Specific Aims To increase nursing use of local anesthetics in pediatrics and to identify barriers for not using local anesthetics prior to any venipuncture. Subjects: Registered pediatric nurses working at Diamond Children’s BUMC-T hospital in General Medicine Units. Methods Pre-questionnaires and post questionnaires administered at the end of each shift daily for two weeks on knowledge, preference, practices of the day, years of work experience and any additional comment. A PowerPoint Intervention directed at the nursing staff educating about each of the local anesthetics used prior to venipuncture. Only used the nurses (N=8) that completed both pre and post questionnaires and excluded all other questionnaires. Main Results Out of the 50 possible registered pediatric nurses in the General Medicine Units, only 8 nurses (16%) completed both the pre and post questionnaires. There was an increase in the number of local anesthetic utilized prior to venipuncture from pre-questionnaires to post-questionnaires but it was not statistically significant. P value= 0.1817, CI=1.00 95% Confidence interval (-0.84-2.84). Conclusions Nursing staff did increase use of local anesthetics prior to venipuncture even with an educational intervention but it was not statistically significant. We did identify barriers for not administering local anesthetics prior to venipuncture which included: no time, no order for local anesthetic was available, and contraindicated.