Holding children and young people: defining skills for good practice

Holding children and young people for clinical procedures is an important area of practice, but research discussing it is sparse. There is a lack of evidence of what nurses actually do in practice when faced with a child or young person who finds it difficult to sit still during a clinical procedure (e.g. cannulation, venepuncture, suturing, gluing of wounds, tracheostomy care) or medical examination. Existing publications suggest that few children’s nurses have questioned the practice of holding, their training on the subject, or the competency of the person teaching them the techniques. The study described in this article attempts to understand why this is the case. The term ‘therapeutic holding’ recommended by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) (2010) will be used to describe this practice througout the article