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Home › Articles › Toddler Health › Making Vaccine Time a Little Easier

Making Vaccine Time a Little Easier

Distraction Techniques for Immunization Pain

By Kelly Burgess

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As a doctor and a mother, Dr. Evelyn Cohen Reis knows better than most people how tough it can be to deal with immunization pain issues in very young children.

"It's a challenge with infants and toddlers because you can't explain to them why you're doing painful procedures, unlike older kids where you can kind of rationalize it," says Dr. Reis, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

It was Dr. Reis' medical school training as well as her personal experience as a parent of two children that initially got her interested in infant pain management. In 2003, she decided to research pain reduction techniques during immunization, and she went on to publish her findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

An Intuitive Approach
Dr. Reis' groundbreaking study is one of hundreds that Dr. Neil Schechter, director of the Pain Relief Program at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, examined for a more recent study published in the journal Pediatrics that recommends pain and anxiety reduction for immunizations be taken more seriously. As far as Dr. Schechter is concerned, it's more than just the desire to spare a very young child pain; it's also important to look at the child's long-term relationship with his or her pediatrician.

"The role of pediatricians has evolved over the past 25 years or so," Dr. Schecter says. "We are now one of the people who will sit down with a family and provide advice and counsel. If from a very young age a child is hurt every time they go to the doctor, this can cause the child to develop a natural fear of their doctor and can negatively influence this long-term relationship."

As far as Dr. Reis is concerned, this is an intuitive approach. "For a long time there was an idea that infants can't feel pain, and any mother knew that was absolutely wrong," she says. "Research is just catching up with something parents have always known."


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