Visualising a safe place reduces operative pain, according to research presented at EuroHeartCare 2014. Nurses guided patients into a trance and found it helped patients cope with pain and anxiety during ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF).
Marianne Wetendorff Nørgaard, lead author and a clinical nurse specialist at Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, Denmark, said: "We ask patients to describe a comfortable safe place they want to be during the procedure. People have chosen a summer house, the beach, or the woods. During the procedure the nurse asks the patient to focus on their safe place and how it looks, smells and sounds."