How To Reduce Injection Pain

Painless injection

The major reason people, especially children, fear injection is the pain that comes with it. How can the pain be reduced? Let us look at some facts about injection.

Injection Facts

There are different injection sites. There are also different types of injection medication with different characteristics. We also have different needles and syringes. The choice of the medication and the character of the person determine the syringe, needle, site and other factors.

Read Also: Types of needle and syringe

Small volume injection can be given with a small needle and syringe. Also, oily injection cannot be given intravenous (IV). These are just some few examples of conditions attached to administration of injection. Wrong approach can cause pain or other complications.

Different people have different pain reflexes. However, the pain from injection can be reduced. Here is how.

Right Injection Tools To Reduce Pain

Look at the injection and determine the best route of administration. Some can be given both IV and intramuscular (IM). An example is ceftriaxone injection. If it is going to be IM, consider the IM site that will generate less pain.

The dose, age and gender of the person will determine the size of the syringe and needle. Larger volume or viscous injection requires a large syringe and needle. The large syringe will be able to hold all the medication. This prevents multiple dosing. Then the large needle will help to reduce the pressure of injection during administration. This helps reduce pain. Using a small needle will increase the pressure and cause pain. But small needle pain is less. They should only be used in small volume injection.

Also, people with large muscles will require that extra big needle which is related to age and gender. More women have fatty tissues than their male counterparts. Using a small needle may not get the needle to the right muscle. This will make the injected liquid enter the wrong layer. And muscle cells have less pain receptors unlike other parts.

Procedure To Reduce Pain

After looking at the above, the process is another factor that can help reduce pain. It is always advisable to educate the patient on the benefits of the procedure and the process. This helps to relax the patient.

Allowing the patient to take up a position that will enable easy access of the injection while reducing pressure on the site is paramount. Some medical personnel talk about distraction. I don't know how well that works.

Your personal hygiene is important to both the patient and the person giving the drug. It is time to administer. The use of alcohol to swab the site is for disinfection. It does not numb pain. But that alcohol is important only in patients with a poorly clean site.

Allow the alcohol to dry out before stretching out the site with two fingers. Allowing the alcohol to dry prevents the stinging sensation that comes from pushing the alcohol into the broken skin where the needle enters. Experiments have shown that stretching the skin over the site reduces pain. Others recommend applying pressure to the site or elsewhere to cause distraction. A cold compress or lidocaine can also be added to the site to numb the pain.

Change the needle when the tip is blunt or the side is scratched from insertion into vial. Some also suggest the needle be changed if the side of the needle is wet. I don't understand the theory behind this. And I am not very sure how this reduces pain.

Hold the syringe like a daft and push in as fast as you can. The faster, the less pain that will be felt. Pushing the plunger of the syringe should be in accordance with the pharmacist direction. IV injection should be injected gradually over some minutes or seconds. As for IM, the most likely process is 1ml in 10 seconds.

Too fast will increase pressure at the site that can cause some degree of pain. However, the slow release of the medication will allow the medication to absorb before more enters.

When taking it out, it should be as fast as possible. Applying pressure to the site after administration is still under debate if it actually helps solve the pain issue. It helps disperse the medication and loosen the muscle. But this can migrate the injection to the subcutaneous layer which has more pain receptors and poor absorption.

There are two important exceptions to this pressure thing: Heparin and Lovenox. Do not massage Heparin or Lovenox injection sites. These medications are anticoagulants and massaging these injection sites can lead to bruising.

Read Also: Why we change injection needle

Now here is a contribution of Rishav Ray of quora in how the patient can reduce pain.

Foolproof Way….

This is something interesting and believe me, there is a foolproof way of completely vanishing this pain. Once while watching one of the episodes of brain games on NatGeo, they came up with a science hack to diminish this pain. All you have to do is at the instant of injection of the syringe to your arm, make loud sounds from your throat as you do when you have a cough…Keep doing it loudly until the doctor or compounder is done giving you the shot. And voila!! No pain at all!!

Actually this follows from the fact that nerve signals that carry the sensation of pain travel slower than the signal that carries this act of coughing out. In that process, the signal that carries the pain sensation is lost somewhere in its way and it doesn't even reach the brain to make you feel any sort of pain.

Now you know why some hands are better than others.