Results
The patients involved in the study had a mean age of 5.26 years (SD=5.73), with just over half (53.04%) of participants aged 2 or older. The mean weight was 24.75 kilograms (SD=25.36). A slight majority (55.57%) of participants were female. Most of the patients were either African American (47.80%) or Caucasian (42.05%). Overall, the mean number of sticks required for successful IV placement was 2.14, the median number of sticks was 2, and the variance in the number of sticks required was 2.35 (SD=1.53). It should be noted that the variance is not much higher than the mean, which indicates that there is not much overdispersion in the data (if viewed as a Poisson process). The majority of patients were observed during the day shift (58.5%); medical personnel assessment had assessed 30% of patients as difficult IV initiations and 53% of children as cooperative. 19% of children were listed as dehydrated upon admittance.
Binomial proportions, along with Clopper-Pearson exact 95% confidence intervals (Table 2, Figure 1) were calculated for each stick attempt, and then compared. It is important to note that once an observation experienced a success, that data point was excluded from the calculation of future proportions. Thus, the sample sizes vary widely among the stick attempts, with attempts greater than 5 having sample sizes that were less than 30. The analysis demonstrated that the confidence intervals for the proportion of success per stick attempt overlapped. The values between 42.14% and 43.18% were observed in every confidence interval.