Helping Children Overcome Fear in a Medical Setting: A guide for healthcare professionals

by Rob Luka

Download PDF

Return to Master Book Reviews Table of Contents

Leicester, North Carolina: Wellness Training Center 2007. 204 pp  $18.95  www.RobLuka.com

This is a lovely book about the therapeutic use of presence, distraction, and the creation of a healing atmosphere with expectations of child competence to deal with painful and/or frightening procedures. Rob Luka, a nurse who specializes in working with children who have diabetes, has three decades of experience with injections, medical and surgical procedures that children could find upsetting and painful.

Rob Luka is an experienced nurse who exudes love and caring in his writing, and obviously finds enormous pleasure in working with children. He discusses varieties of factors and approaches that we can activate to help children accept these treatments with a minimum of pain and suffering:

• Developing a good rapport
• Maintaining a calm presence 
• Holding clear expectations of cooperation and a minimum of pain with procedures
• Using words that elicit cooperative, healing responses
• Redirecting fear
• Applying intuition
• Introducing love and spirit

Luka illustrates his approaches with many helpful examples for how to deal with challenging situations. He gives the example of Sarah, a 5 year-old girl who was slowly absorbing his explanations to her and her mother about what it meant to have diabetes. All was going well till she realized blood would have to be drawn, and that it would be her blood. She ran to the clinic bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind her. Luka followed her:

Through the door, with a defeated, playful and sincere tone in my voice, I said, 'Oh, all right, I'll let you use my finger.' 
  Instantly, she unlocked the door and came right back out under here own free will.
  . . . What I have to remind everyone of is that it wasn't just the words that made her respond. It was her natural ability to read my loving intention toward her that brought her out. My deep inner sincerity of wanting her to have a positive experience drawing blood and my love for working with children . . .

This is a book that anyone working with children will appreciate.

Return to Master Book Reviews Table of Contents