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Hospitals and other medical settings often involve situations that are distressing to children, including intrusive procedures, therapeutic interventions, limited or restricted activity, separation from the familiar, and an unfamiliar environment (Bossert, 1994). In particular, painful medical procedures, such as injections or intravenous (IV) line insertion, may lead to high levels of distress (Bossert, 1994; Claar, Walker, & Smith, 2002; Cohen et al., 2001; Smalley, 1999). Higher levels of distress have shortand long-term effects; extreme distress can jeopardize successful completion of a required procedure, and long-term effects include difficulty with future medical procedures and avoidance of medical care (Du, Jaaniste, Champion, & Yap, 2008; Kennedy, Luhmann, & Zempsky, 2008; Matthews, 2011; Noel, McMurtry, Chambers, & McGrath, 2010). Variability in causes of children’s distress, levels of anxiety, and responses to interventions designed to lower anxiety and reduce distress highlight the need for tools facilitating rapid clinical evaluation of each child. Such tools are readily available for assessment of pain (von Baeyer, 2009), but not for anxiety. Validated measures of child anxiety are typically lengthy and designed for use in research, limiting their utility in busy clinical settings. A brief measure of child self-reported state anxiety will facilitate identification of children with high anxiety levels, as well as development of interventions to lower anxiety in clinical settings, helping clinicians provide individualized care. The purpose of this article is to describe the construct validity of the Child Anxiety Meter-State (CAM-S) as a brief measure of child state anxiety appropriate for use in a clinical setting. |
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