Hannah Gennis1, Shaylea Badovinac1, Rebecca Pillai Riddell1, Saul Greenberg1, Hartley Garfield1
1) Canada
Background & Aim: The OUCHI Tool is a checklist of suboptimal parent behaviours that increase infant distress during vaccination (e.g., looking frustrated). The OUCHI has demonstrated convergent and divergent relationships with measures of infant pain-related distress and parent sensitivity at 12 months. Our goal was to assess these relationships during 6-month vaccinations.
Methods: Using archival footage from the OUCH Cohort, 136 infant-parent dyads previously coded at 12 months were coded on the OUCHI at 6 months. Divergent and convergent relationships were assessed using measures of parental sensitivity (EAS; Biringen, 2008), facial indicators of pain (NFCS, Grunau & Craig, 1987) and broad behavioural indicators of pain (MBPS; Taddio et al., 1995), respectively. The relationship between 6-month and 12-month OUCHI scores was also assessed to determine reliability over time.
Results: At 6 months, the OUCHI showed a divergent relationship with EAS (r = -0.36, d = 0.77) and convergent relationships with NFCS one minute (r = 0.34 d = 0.72), two minutes, (r = 0.46, d = 1.04), and three minutes post-needle (r = 0.18, d = 0.37), and MBPS one minute (r = 0.47, d = 1.07), two minutes (r = 0.56, d = 1.35), and three minutes (r = 0.29, d = 0.61) post-needle. A moderate relationship was found between OUCHI scores at 6- and 12-months (r = 0.36, d = 0.77).
Conclusions: Parents who use more suboptimal behaviours post-needle are typically less sensitive, and have infants with higher pain-related distress. Further, OUCHI scores are consistent between 6- and 12 months. The OUCHI Tool appears to be a promising new way to assess parent behaviours and their impact on the infant during vaccination.
Acknowledgements/Disclosures: This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Operating Grant #524563 & #524432). The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
