By Marti Webb Slay
Patient anxiety can be an issue for medical tests at any age, but it can be particularly problematic for children. Children’s of Alabama X-ray suite now offers Philips Ambient Experience to calm children and their parents.
“Kids are already nervous about being somewhere unfamiliar, possibly having to leave their mom’s arms,” said Karen Knight, diagnostic imaging manager. “Older children are still anxious, since they aren’t sure what’s going to happen. Hospital rooms and clinic areas are kind of sterile looking, so there’s anxiety. Is it going to hurt?
“When a child is calm and compliant, the parent is calmer as well. And vice versa. Parents love their children, and sometimes parents are anxious, and children can feed off that. A lot of times they’ve come from the ER and waited a while, so nerves are edge and they don’t know what’s wrong. We try our best to alleviate anxiety for both the parent and the child. It helps the parents to see their child calm down.”
The Ambient Experience combines lighting, sound, and video in a variety of themes to calm the child and make their X-ray experience more pleasant and less threatening. Patients can choose from more than 40 relaxation themes for different ages and cultures.
The CT suite at Children’s has successfully offered the Ambient Experience for 12 years now. Two years ago, a donor paved the way to include it in the X-ray suite as well. “When they walk in, it immediately alleviates all the anxiety, especially since X-rays usually don’t hurt,” Knight said. “We’ve seen with repeat customers, if they know they are coming to X-ray, they aren’t going to be scared. They’ll ask to come to that room, and they get to pick a scene that makes them happy, whether it’s an ocean or mountains or a cartoon. It doesn’t usually take long for them to choose. They are so used to iPads, it goes pretty quickly, but it gives them some ownership of what’s going on, and they really enjoy that.”
Knight said it helps testing go faster. “We always explain what’s going on, but we aren’t having to coax them to leave mom’s arms, or lay on the table, or sit in the chair so we can get the X-ray,” she said. “They get fixated on the screen they’ve chosen, and they are more likely to just do whatever we need. We get the images more quickly, because the child is distracted, and when they are distracted, they are more likely to lay still and do what we need them to do.
“We’d like to see the experience in more X-ray rooms. Until then, the room equipped with Ambient Experience is the first choice for both our patients and the X-ray techs. It’s a huge distraction for the kids and makes our jobs easier and more efficient and quicker, and really safer, because you and the moms aren’t fighting with the kids to lay down.”
