Ready_Patien I MAGINE YOU ARE A DOCTOR, ready to begin the day with your first patient: a young girl who is waiting in the preoperative room, terrified for her operation. The child’s anxiety is staggering; her parents are trying to comfort her, but making matters worse, even their nerves begin to rub off on her. Upon entering the room, she starts to scream, tries to get out of the bed and knocks the clipboard you are holding out of your hands. Her parents attempt to calm her down, but fail, leaving you—a stranger in your white coat—with the responsibility to cease the tantrum and begin the preoperative process. What are you to do now? While this scenario may fall under the category of an atypical response, it is not uncommon for children to experience preoperative anxiety and other negative postoperative effects. In fact, more than half of the children that undergo surgery experience some level of preoperative anxiety. No child wants to be in the hospital anticipating the scary needle or doctor they are soon to encounter. In addition, the hospital is typically a foreign environment, which often makes the child feel even less secure. Possibly the scariest moments for the young patient are those in the period of time between which the child first leaves their parents, to the moment they are anesthetized. Preoperative anxiety in pediatrics is a prevalent issue in the medical field today because children often exhibit prolonged recovery rates and postoperative maladaptive behaviors. However, doctors and innovators are developing technology based solutions to improve a child’s experience with
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surgery and reduce the fear and anxiety that that child may suffer. A case study performed by doctors and researchers of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2006) discovered that anxious children self-reported experiencing higher levels of pain than calm children did. Whether or not the reported data is an association with perioperative anxiety or a causeand-effect relationship has yet to be determined. However, significant amounts of research similar to this study supports the notion that anxious children have a prolonged recovery time and more difficulties
healing from an operation. In addition to reported increased pain levels, children have been noted to develop maladaptive short or long term eating and sleep habits. A new interactive device, called B.E.R.T (Bedside Entertainment and Relaxation Theatre), has been created by the CHARIOT program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. The system works by a simple screen that is first clamped to the end of the bed, and a projector behind the bed out of the child’s view so that all of their focus is devoted to the screen. There are a variety of