JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Despite the availability of high-quality evidence and clinical practice guidelines for effective management, this evidence is rarely used in practice for managing children’s pain from needle procedures like vaccinations. Parents are generally unaware of pain management strategies they can use with their children.

Objective:

To develop, implement, and evaluate the implementation effectiveness of a parent-directed YouTube video on evidence-based strategies to manage needle pain in children.

Methods:

This was a descriptive study. Online analytics were extracted from YouTube to describe video reach. An online survey was used to seek parent and healthcare professional feedback about the video. The 2-minute 19-second video was launched on YouTube on November 4, 2013. In the video, a 4-year-old girl tells parents what they should and shouldn’t do to help needles hurt less. The key evidence-based messages shared in the video were: relaxation, distraction, and topical anesthetic creams. A group of parents (n=178) and healthcare professionals (n=278) completed the online survey. Measures of online reach included: number of unique views, country where the video was used, sex of the viewer, and length of watch time. The online survey assessed video acceptability and adoption.

Results:

As of November 4, 2018 (5 years after launch), the video had 237,132 unique views from 182 countries, with most viewers watching an average of 55% of the video (1-minute 16-seconds). Overall, both parents and healthcare professionals reported strong acceptance of the video (i.e., they liked the video, found it helpful, felt more confident) and reported significant improvements in plans to use of relaxation and topical anaesthetic creams.

Conclusions:

This parent-directed YouTube video was an acceptable and appropriate way to disseminate evidence about procedure pain management to a large number of parents.