We went from screaming and held down to "I never felt that" - totally recommend!
- Diane H., mother in search of a cure for Crohn's disease

What is Buzzy®?

Buzzy® uses natural pain relief by confusing your body's own nerves and distracting attention away from the poke, thereby dulling or eliminating sharp pain. In the same way that rubbing a bumped elbow helps stop the hurt, or cool running water soothes a burn, Buzzy® bypasses sharp pain.

In an emergency department, nurses and doctors can get too busy to wait for numbing creams for needle procedures. For newly diagnosed diabetic children, the medical community has a history of expecting kids to just get used to needle pain. For shots, for bee stings, for boo-boos, for injected medicines,… for all acute pain management, we developed Buzzy® to put instant pain management in YOUR hands.

A pilot trial in adults for IV starts (Clinical Journal of Pain, October 2009) found that Buzzy® significantly decreased needle pain. A trial in children needing IV starts in the emergency department also showed significantly decreased pain by child and parent report. Buzzy® has been used for dentistry, travel immunizations, fertility shots, and finger pricks, splinter removal, and flu injections!

Pain relief for immunizations, particularly multiple shots, requires a slightly different technique than needle pain relief for IV's. When there is no risk of vasoconstriction, pain control is maximized by cooling the area then moving just proximal during the shot.

Ideally, a parent would put an arm around their child and hold Buzzy on the site for about 30 seconds before the shot. Even with Buzzy there will be dull touch sensations (those are transmitted on different nerves that Buzzy doesn't block) so use distraction questions or Bee-Stractor Emergency Entertainment cards to entertain and pull attention away if the child already has a needle phobia

When the shot is ready, move the Buzzy up and keep pressing on the nearest bony surface to maximize vibration transmission. The little red dot in the picture to the right shows where the shot would go. If multiple immunizations are being given, change out the cold packs so the sites each have 30 seconds of numbing.

If parents aren't willing or it doesn't seem like a good/safe idea, Buzzy can be placed in the palm of the nurse's hand leaving fingers free to bunch up skin.

For Kids 4-10 years old

Kids do best if they're underpromised and Buzzy then over-performs. Let her play and experiment with Buzzy to get used to the sensations before using it for shots, and reserve the distraction cards for when she gets her first shot with it (I'll send you a free one if you didn't order a set, then you can figure out the kinds of questions to ask and get other seek and find books). You can also have her rate her pain on a faces scale with shots now, experimenting with things like taking a cold drink of something sweet while getting the shot, or taking a cold drink of water, etc. You can also let her try taking a sweet mystery drink right when you give the shot and trying to guess what it is as a distraction. Then when she gets Buzzy, she'll be used to both abstracting herself a little from the process, and she'll know that various techniques work better or don't so she'll appreciate how much Buzzy helps.