Brief Guided Imagery Training Helps Kids with Sickle Disease Pain
In this pilot study, an investigator from Lehman College of the City University of New York in The Bronx, NY, studied the impact of training children with sickle disease to use brief guided imagery segments to better deal with their pain episodes.
The children were trained with an audio recording of guided imagery messages, which they listened to for 5 to 10 minutes, three times each day, regardless of pain and also during pain episodes.
Participants were monitored for 4 weeks, pre and 4 weeks post the guided imagery training. Additionally, the children kept a daily record of their pain episodes, (intensity and treatment), school attendance, and also the frequency of GI use.
At the conclusion of the 4-week period, measures were again taken of usual pain patterns (PAT), visual imagery ability (KIAQ), and the disease specific self-efficacy scale.
The Sickle Cell Self-Efficacy Scale (SCSES) a new nine-item scale measuring disease-specific perceptions of self-efficacy, was also measured. (The instrument's developers established internal consistency by Cronbach's alpha of 0.89.)
Findings confirmed that children with SCD who are trained in guided imagery have greater disease-specific self-efficacy following the training than they had prior to learning guided imagery. Greater self-efficacy scores are associated with better physical and psychological functioning.
Eighteen children had positive gained scores and sixteen children raised their scores more than one standard deviation above the mean score for this sample distribution.
Citation: Dobson C1. Outcome results of self-efficacy in children with sickle disease pain who were trained to use guided imagery. Applied Nursing Research. 2015 Nov;28 (4):384-90. doi: 10.1016/j.apnr.2014.12.005. Epub 2015 Feb 27. [email protected]
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