“Now, I won’t get a vaccination from anyone but Melinda.”
HealthEast Eagan Clinic patient Emily H.

“I don’t like shots. I used to get really scared,” says Emily, a bubbly eight-year-old. “She was a world-class scaredy-cat about getting shots,” said Cara, Emily’s mother. So much so, that when Emily received her kindergarten vaccinations, two people had to hold her. “One time, I screamed until I popped all the blood vessels in my face,” confessed Emily.

Emily’s anxiety had her mother worried — about when to tell her about shots ahead of time, and how to handle it at the doctor’s office. “Emily would hyperventilate even before we would pull into the doctor’s parking lot. I would tell her to relax, that she was making it worse, but that didn’t really help,” Cara recalled. “But all this was before we went to Melinda at our Eagan clinic.”

At the beginning of the appointment, Cara made some quick hand gestures behind her daughter’s back to alert Melinda, the nurse giving the vaccinations. Emily remembers, “She was so nice — she introduced herself, and seemed so calm. I was scared so I was crying a little bit. But then my mom held my arm and she just did it. And I thought, ‘Wow, did she really just give me a shot?’ I could hardly feel it.”

“This has been a transformation,” said Cara. “Now Emily says to people, ‘I won’t get a shot from anyone but Melinda.’” Emily agrees that it’s a completely different experience when vaccination season rolls around, “I had been planning the whole year before to be calm. I even started practicing ahead of time with my fingernail, poking myself so I’d be okay. And my fingernail pokes hurt worse than my shot!”

An extra dose of patience for young patients: Melinda Ross, Pediatrics Nurse and Clinical Lead

“I’ve covered a lot of different areas in my career as I’ve furthered my education,” said Melinda Ross, pediatrics nurse and clinical lead at HealthEast Eagan Clinic, “but what I really love is pediatrics. Kids are so much fun to be around, they tell it like it is. And when you work with children, you’re not just working with the patient — you’re really working with the whole family: mom or dad, or any other siblings that come in with them as well.”

When faced with Emily, who was terrified of getting vaccinations, Melinda drew on years of experience with anxious children. “A fear of needles is very real for lots of kids. They’ll go to many lengths not to have a shot — they’ll hide under tables, I even had one run away,” said Melinda. “The most important thing I can do is be very patient, and decrease their anxiety. Not only is the child nervous and scared, but their parents may be as well, so I help the adults along with subtle hints.”

Melinda has acquired a reputation as the go-to nurse for shots. But she claims no secret to her technique: “I try to describe the injection in words a kid can understand, letting them know I’m putting medicine in their body to be armies to protect them against bad things. Then I tell the child to make their arm as loose as a noodle. A needle in a squishy muscle hurts less than when it goes into a tense muscle. I distract them by singing a song or saying our ABCs, and then we’re done and off to the races with pencils and stickers that make everything all better.”

The actual expert in handling injections for a child, according to Melinda, is the parent. “We both have the child’s safety and health in mind — that’s our first priority. But only a parent knows how a child will react. If the anticipation of a shot is a source of anxiety, a caregiver might choose to wait to tell a child about the injection until they’re here. They might hold a child’s hand, or whole body on their lap. I work with them to find the best, safest solution.”

After some prodding, Melinda did divulge one secret weapon — a white lie. “I do sometimes tell a young patient that if I give them a shot in their left vs. right arm, it actually hurts less,” she confessed. “Not true. Don’t tell the kids.”