effect of acupressure (ub32) on pain intensity in intramuscular injections

background: pain originating from intramuscular (im) injection should not be underestimated, because it can damage the nurse–patient relationship. this research aimed at answering two main questions, whether acupressure is effective on pain severity dueto im injection or not and whether pain severity in two groups is different or not. materials and methods: this research was performed in government-affi liated hospitals of ilam. the patients were 15-55 yearsold. subjects were individually asked to participate in the research, and an informed consent was obtained from them. beforeinjection, the patients were asked to lie in prone position and the acupressure point ub32 was found. it was pressed for 1 mincircularly. then, the acupressure point was pressed directly (pressure equal to 4.5 kg/cm2) by thumb three times sequentially.after acupressure, 3 ml penicillin 6.3.3 was injected to buttock muscle. in the control group was injected only penicillin 6.3.3 bythe conventional method. collected data were analyzed by spss 16 version. results: means of pain intensity in the acupressure group according to body mass index values (bmis) were 1.50 ± 0.75 inthin, 1.64 ± 0.72 in normal, 1.38 ± 0.60 in overweight, 1.40 ± 0.54 in obese, and 1 ± 0.0 in severely obese subjects, with a totalscore of 1.53 ± 0.68. analysis of variance (anova) showed no signifi cant difference between mean pain intensities based onbmi. there was no signifi cant difference in the two groups concerning bmi and age (age: 30.24 ± 10.98 vs. 29.26 ± 10.07;bmi: 23.74 ± 4.45 vs. 23.88 ± 5.74), but the difference between them in terms of pain intensity mean was statistically signifi cant. conclusion: it is concluded that acupressure in ub32 is effective on reducing the pain severity. pain severity mean in theacupressure group was lesser than in the other group, and t-test showed a signifi cant difference between the two groups.