The effect of jaw relaxation on pain anxiety of burn dressing: Randomized clinical trial with control group

Patients with burns, experience high levels of anticipatory anxiety during dressing changes. Anxiety tends to increase after each dressing and during time; on the other hand this anxiety cannot be completely managed by anxiolytic drugs. Nurses contribute to pain management by using pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions. Relaxation techniques are one of the most used approaches in pain anxiety management. However there is not enough information about the effects of these techniques on pain anxiety of these patients. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of jaw relaxation on pain anxiety of burn dressing. This study was a randomized clinical trial with control group. One hundred patients hospitalized in Shahid Motahari Burn Center in Tehran within July to December, 2009 were recruited by convenience sampling and were randomly assigned to either experimental or control groups using minimization. Experimental group practiced jaw relaxation for 20 minutes before entering dressing room. Data were assessed with Burn Specific Pain Anxiety Scale (BSPAS) and analyzed using descriptive statistics, Chi-Square test, dependent and independent t-test and Fisher’s exact test by SPSS-PC (17). Significant statistical difference was seen between the level of pain anxiety before & after intervention in experimental group. Moreover, after intervention there were a significant difference between the level of pain anxiety after dressing in experimental and control groups. There weren’t significant difference between pain anxiety after intervention, before and after dressing in experimental group. Nurses can independently decrease the pain anxiety of burned patients and its subsequent physical and psychological burden by teaching the simple and inexpensive technique of jaw relaxation. Further studies are suggested to assess the effect of this technique on pain anxiety of patients with other disease except burns who suffer from painful procedures.