Nature sights and sounds enhance pain management - Brief Article

AORN Journal,  August, 2003  

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The sights and sounds of nature are effective in distracting patients and enhancing pain reducing efforts during and after bronchoscopy procedures, according to a May 27, 2003, news release from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Researchers emphasize, however, that sight and sound distraction therapy is not a substitute for pain medication.

Forty-one men and women looked at cloth murals of a meadow scene hung by their beds and listened to audiotaped nature sounds (eg, a babbling brook) through headphones during 25-minute bronchoscopies and a three-hour recovery period. A control group of 39 patients underwent bronchoscopies without the distraction therapy but with comparable levels of care and pain control measures. Both groups completed questionnaires rating their pain, anxiety, perceptions of privacy, breathing difficulty, willingness to undergo the procedure again, and safety on a five-point scale. Patients who underwent distraction therapy were 43% more likely to report pain control as very good or excellent. Based on this research, Johns Hopkins will use distraction therapy to enhance comfort of patients undergoing bronchoscopy.

Nature Sights and Sounds Ease Pain During Common Lung Procedure (news release, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, May 27, 2003) http://www:hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2003/May/O30527B.htm (accessed 2 June 2003).

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