Pediatric Adventures
By Vivek Kemp
You can have the most accurate and advanced medical equipment in the world, but using it can still be stressful for patients and doctors alike. GE partnered with Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC to design an entire experience centered around the people being treated—in this case, kids, showing that the patient’s perception of treatment and the diagnostic tests that come with it can be just as important as the treatment itself.
“Aaaarrrr ye ready?” the hospital technologist growls, handing the patient a black-felt pirate hat. “Yer pirate ship awaits, Cap’n.”
The child draws the hat to his head. Skull-and-crossbones sneer through the waiting room, as if proclaiming, “I’m not just a patient. I’m a pirate.”
The 7-year-old’s mother holds his hand as they walk to the CT room. She assures him that he’s going to have a great adventure. They’ve come here— Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC—to have his sinus cavities scanned.
As the mini-swashbuckler nears the room, a set of brown planks extend into the hallway, leading to his ship. Soon there is crisp blue water beneath and the subtle smell of coconut in the air.
“Welcome to Pirate Island,” a nurse says, as the boy enters the room.
On this day, Duncan Auer is a pirate.
Duncan’s boat is actually a specially decorated CT machine. The exam bed has been made to look like a hull. The CT tube: a wooden steering wheel. The water and planks below: brown and blue decals on the floor. The coconut smell: an aromatherapy scent—piña colada—churning from a black vaporizer in the corner.
Go behind the scenes with with the designers of GE’s Adventure Series™.
There are seven other rooms besides Pirate Island, whose themes include a jungle, a campground and an underwater fantasy. They are part of a pilot GE Healthcare program called the GE Adventure Series™, developed in partnership with Children’s Hospital, to help reduce stress in children undergoing imaging scans. The series is currently not commercially available.
“Children are very cooperative,” says Duncan’s mother, Liz Auer, who works as a preschool teacher. “If you can use your imagination and encourage [kids] to use theirs, you can make any experience into something that can be fun or, at the very least, relaxing and not stressful,” she says.
And while all the decals, costumes and role-playing may seem at once whimsical as well as obvious. They are not.
Some of the most effective insights came from kneeling down and looking at rooms from the height of a child.
In a study conducted by Children’s Hospital from 2006–2007, before installation of the Adventure Series, the staff found standard, non-decorated, rooms stressed children to the point that many needed to be sedated before they would lie still.
In the study, hospital staff decked out a CT room with an underwater theme, replete with a video player, life-sized mermaids and music. They found the refurbished room reduced anxiety in families and children. The fantastical environment also helped reduce sedation rates.
An article published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, in 2008, describes in detail the dramatic drop in the need for use of sedation after the room was decorated.
Armed with such positive results, Children’s Hospital and GE came together to refine the design and techniques that proved so effective.
“We weren’t sure what the solution was going to be, but we knew standard rooms were not going to cut it anymore,” says Doug Dietz, Principal Designer, GE Global Design and one of the originators of the Adventure Series.
To find that solution, Dietz and his team worked with a children’s museum, a daycare and childhood development experts to understand the needs and perspectives of young patients.
“We did simple things that get overlooked,” he says. “I mean, some of the most effective insights we got came from kneeling down and looking at rooms from the height of a child.”
He pushed his team to think in terms of what kids see and how they relate to the world.
“Our first design session was actually in a daycare,” says Dietz. “We knew we had to come at this from a different perspective.”
Kathleen Kapsin, director of the Pediatric Radiology Department at Children’s Hospital, agrees.
“All of our equipment is very high-tech,” she says. “We can get you great images, but we can’t get them if the child isn’t laying still and feeling well enough to go through the scan.”
“We now have an elaborate way of almost pulling off a theme park,” she says, referring to the outfitted rooms.
Kapsin is quick to point out, however, that children don’t come to a hospital because they want to.
“These kids are dealing with serious problems. Something like cancer isn’t cured through colorful paint. We know that. But this is about acknowledging patients and their needs beyond medicine. If we can do that then we have elevated them beyond just another patient. They are individuals.”
Vivek Kemp, a former assignment editor at NBC News, is a multi-media content producer and GE’s Reporter-at-Large.
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