12 Nov Hospitals create ‘imaging adventures’ for pediatric patients

AuntMinnie.com | November 12 – Whimsy and fantasy can do wonders to make hospital experiences less frightening and intimidating for children. Clinical staff benefit as well because the treatment process can be a whole lot easier.

Just ask the radiology team at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. By creating a kid-friendly environment that involves sight, sound, smell, and active participation in the “adventure” by anyone a patient encounters, the radiology department has achieved the remarkable: It has reduced CT scan sedations of pediatric patients as young as age 3 by 99%.

Additionally, Children’s Hospital has been handling a steady increase of imaging procedures, now numbering about 180,000 exams a year, without needing to increase its technical and administrative staff, thanks to more rapid patient throughput and improvements in workflow efficiencies. Its themed rooms for emergency and scheduled CT, MRI, PET/CT, and nuclear medicine examinations, and the experiences created in them by radiologic technologists, nurses, child-life specialists, and music therapists, enchant patients to the extent that some even make requests for a repeat exam.

And in Jacksonville, FL, radiology staff members at an outpatient clinic have also found that the use of themed imaging suites is also making a major impact on digital radiography room utilization. The individuals who operate these services at Nemours Children’s Clinic are still in the process of collecting formal data, but they shared several anecdotal experiences with AuntMinnie.com.

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