Enhancing pain management in the PICU by teaching guided mental imagery: a quality-improvement project.

OBJECTIVE This quality-improvement study, following the PDCA methodology, compared the effectiveness of teaching mental imagery (MI) for pain management versus conducting a detailed inquiry (DI) about pain-related experiences with acutely injured PICU patients. METHODS Participants included 44 hospitalized children and adolescents assigned to one of two intervention groups, MI (N = 24) or DI (N = 20). Pain was assessed pre- and post-intervention using the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale and a 0-10 Likert pain rating scale, and the Pediatric Trauma Score was utilized to assess the severity of each child's injuries. RESULTS Boys in the MI condition exhibited a significant decrease in average pain ratings [t(38) = 3.41, p = .0015]. Girls in the MI condition exhibited a non-significant decrease in average pain ratings. CONCLUSIONS Teaching children the use of MI for pain management in an intensive-care setting was supported; the use of DI with boys was not supported.