Background: Premature newborns undergo numerous painful procedures during their process of care and treatment. Nurses can help reduce the complications of pain through various non-medicinal methods. The present study was therefore conducted to assess the effect of swaddling on physiological pain responses of premature infants to Nasogastric Tube Insertion at 29 Bahman Hospital of Tabriz, affiliated with the Social Security Organization in 2013-14.

  Methods: The present crossover clinical trial was conducted on 38 premature infants born at the gestational age of 28-34 weeks hospitalized at the neonatal intensive care unit, selected through the convenience sampling method and randomly divided into two groups. In both groups, physiological pain responses of the newborn, including heart rate and arterial blood oxygen saturation, were measured before, during and after the nasogastric tube insertion. Data were analyzed in SPSS/18. The independent t-test and were used for comparing the quantitative variables. P-values below 0.05 were considered statistically significant .

  Result: The results showed no significant statistical differences between the qualitative and quantitative variables in the two groups. In addition, comparing the mean physiological pain responses at different times during the assessment showed that swaddling improves the newborn’s heart rate and arterial blood oxygen saturation during and after the nasogastric tube insertion (P<0.05).

  Conclusion: Given the effect of swaddling on physiological pain responses to nasogastric tube insertion, nurses are recommended to use it as an effective intervention for reducing pain in newborns .