Relaxation: episiotomy incisional pain and overall discomfort.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a simple relaxation technique on postpartum patients' episiotomy incisional pain and overall discomfort. This study was carried out through the use of a posttest-only experimental design. A total of 40 subjects (20 in the experimental group and 20 in the control group) participated in the study. Only the experimental group was taught the relaxation technique and told to use it whenever they had pain or discomfort in their episiotomy incision. Within 24 hours after delivery, all subjects rated their episiotomy pain and overall discomfort on the scales of pain and discomfort. Twenty-four hours after delivery, a chart review was done on each subject to further measure pain by amount and frequency of analgesic use. Paired t-tests were used to examine the differences between the means of the experimental and control groups for subjects' pain as measured by amount of pain and amount of analgesic use, and amount of overall discomfort. Chi-square analysis was utilized to examine the differences between the experimental and control groups for subjects' amount of pain as measured by frequency of analgesic use. Results of the analyses demonstrated that for the subjects who used the relaxation technique, there was a general trend for decreased pain and discomfort.