Relieving pain and anxiety in children is crucial for emergency nurses.

Virtual reality reduces pain/anxiety during invasive pediatric emergency procedures.

Virtual reality provides comfort for both children and their parents/companions.

To evaluate the effectiveness of virtual reality to reduce pain and anxiety in pediatric patients during venipuncture procedure in emergency care and the behavioral response of their parents/companions.

Virtual reality is being used as a source of distraction in children undergoing invasive procedures.

Quasi-experimental study with 458 children (from 2 to 15 years) who attended a pediatric emergency service from September 2019 to April 2021. An intervention based on virtual reality as a distraction method during venipuncture procedure was applied. The level of pain and anxiety of children and attitude of parents/companions were assessed. Ordinal and binary logistic regressions were applied.

A protective effect of using virtual reality was observed in the intervention group both for the absence of pain (−4.12; 95 % CI: −4.85 to −3.40) and anxiety (−1.71; 95 % CI: −2.24 to −1.17) in children aged between 2 and 15 years. A significant reduction in the blocking response of the accompanying parents (−2.37; 95 % CI: −3.017 to −1.723) was also observed.

VR is effective in reducing pain and anxiety in children during venipuncture in emergency care. A positive attitude of the parents during the invasive procedure to their children was found.

Anxiety

Pain

Pediatric patients

Phlebotomy

Virtual reality

Quasi-experimental

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.