- interacting with children during acute examinations

For a child, an acute radiographic examination after a physical injury may cause anxiety, pain and distress. To facilitate the unpleasantness that may be experienced, there is a need, to evolve new strategies for using interactive communication. The overall aim of the project is to develop interactive communication support for use in the radiology context and study the effects on children’s anxiety, pain and distress related to participation in the examination followed a physical injury. The project will include both development, intervention and evaluation of ICIR.

Children, 3-12 years from preschool, elementary school, special school and immigrants will participate in focus groups as co-designers of ICIR. Parents and healthcare professionals will be invited to a Delphi-study, aiming to make the ICIR easy to use and adapted to suit the needs of the family. For the intervention, a randomized controlled study will be performed within a number of radiology departments throughout Sweden. The effects on the children’s participation and capacity to cope with anxiety, pain and distress with or without ICIR will be measured. To evaluate ICIR, semi-structured qualitative interviews will be performed with children and parents as well as health care professionals from each of the hospitals enrolled in the intervention.

Project leader: Berit Møller Christensen