Time to change phlebotomy? A short story

摘要

Children can find hospitals and procedures stressful. This is particularly true for children with intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These children can find phlebotomy distressing and often need repeated testing due to medications and screening tests for associated diseases.1 2 Social stories are simple, picture stories that are used by children with ASD and intellectual disabilities to prepare them for everyday activities, for example, bed-time or school. With the success of visual cues and social stories in other areas of management, we elected to introduce this for phlebotomy. At the time of writing, we were unable to find published literature on their use in phlebotomy.