While knowledge syntheses and clinical practice guidelines exist about reducing pain, fear, and stress-related responses during needle procedures in children, there are few resources to guide patients and providers about how to systematically integrate this evidence into routine practice. Evidence-based and systems-level approaches are required to help make the research ‘actionable’ to users. We created a framework called the CARD (Comfort-Ask-Relax-Distract) system to address this knowledge-to-care gap. CARD was demonstrated to reduce fear, pain, and stress-related responses in children and adults undergoing vaccinations across settings, including schools, pharmacies, mass vaccination clinics, and hospitals. It was recently adapted for venipunctures undertaken in the hospital setting. This presentation will introduce the CARD framework to attendees and review some of the key tools for promoting practice change. Upon completion, attendees will be able to describe how to integrate evidence-based interventions into practice to improve the quality of care during needle procedures.

 

*Free CARD postcard distributed to all attendees.

Lunch is provided to attendees by the University of Toronto.