Comparison of mother's milk and melody on severity heel stick pain in neonates admitted in NICU

During health care in NICU, infants undergo extremely painful procedures which may cause problems in terms of disregarding the pain such as changes in pattern of respiratory rate, heart rate, and blood oxygen saturation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of mother’s milk and melody on heel stick pain in infants has been done. quasi-experimental study performed in Alzahra Hospital (Isfahan, Iran) for five months. Seventy five infants were selected through convenient sampling method that were assigned to three equal groups randomly (25 each group). In the melody group, a selected melody was played for infants with one meter distance from them with 65 dB, 3 minutes before, during and after the heel stick procedure and their pain severity were evaluated by NIPS scale and recorded at the mentioned times. In the mother's milk group also3 minutes before, during and after procedure amount 2 cc from mother's milk which infuses by syringe in infant mouth. The pain severity was also recorded for the control group 3 minutes before, during and after the heel stick procedure. The results of the repeated measures ANOVA showed that the mean pain score in each of the three groups had significant differences between different times (P< 0/001). The findings indicate that melody reduces infant pain during heel stick; therefore it is suggested to avoid adverse effects on infant pain during painful procedures used to play melodies.