Background: Neonates treated in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit often receive invasive procedures that can cause pain. The aim of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of non-nutritive sucking as an analgesic for neonates who were given invasive procedures.
Methodology: This experimental study implemented a post-test-only control group design, involving 64 neonates in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, selected using a simple random sampling technique, who were then divided into a treatment group and a control group, 32 neonates each. The treatment group was given non-nutritive sucking, while the control group was given standard intervention, then the pain response was measured in both groups. Next, the pain levels of the two groups were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test.
Results: The measurement results showed that there was a difference in the mean scores of pain response between treatment and control group, respectively 1.53125 and 5.8125. The p-value of the difference test was 0.000000004252, so it could be interpreted that there was a significant difference in pain levels between the two groups.
Conclusion: It was concluded that non-nutritive sucking is an effective method for reducing the pain response in neonates during invasive procedures.
Key words: Infant; Non-nutritive sucking; Pain management; Neonatal intensive care
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