For kids, going under anesthesia can be scary. This nurse made a video game to ease fears.
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Imagine being a child being prepped for surgery, surrounded by scalpels and strangers wearing masks, hats and gloves. An anesthesia mask hovers over your face in a brightly lit operating room. Sounds scary, right?
An Ohio nurse practitioner and clinical researcher created a breath-controlled video game that makes the process a lot less stressful for kids.
Abby Hess, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, invented EZ Induction. The video game, in which the anesthesia mask is the game controller, helps children ages 2 to 10 relax when it’s time to go under.
The game gets children familiar with breathing through a mask.
“I wanted to find a way to make this experience much easier for patients, and kids are so engaged and comfortable with technology,” Hess told USA TODAY.
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Hess and the Cincinnati Children’s Innovation Ventures team have tested the game on “hundreds of patients” through different stages of research and development, she says.
“I consistently have seen parents say: ‘This was wonderful. This really helped my child, and it actually helped my anxiety, too,’” Hess said.
Why pre-surgery is stressful for kids
Studies show the highest point of preoperative anxiety in children usually happens just before they’re rolled into the operating room. The anxiety is something Hess sees every day.
“Sometimes parents are with them, sometimes they're not, but certainly being separated can be scary,” she said.
Research also reveals that high anxiety and negative behaviors before surgery, according to Hess, are associated with poor postoperative outcomes such as delirium, higher reports of pain and negative behavioral changes after kids go home.
“Previously, we’d ask kids to put on the mask, and kids who were scared often wouldn't,” Hess said. “If kids get used to breathing through the mask, they’re more comfortable doing that when they go off to sleep if they can learn that in the preoperative area.”
How the game works
When introducing the tablet-based computer application to children, Hess shows them how the mask connects to the tablet. Then the game begins.
“The story is about a little elephant that's going to a birthday party at the zoo,” Hess said. Children put the mask on and start breathing into it, "and it blows up a little balloon that wakes up all the animals in the game."
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The patients can play several challenges less than a minute long.
“If they liked those challenges, we say, ‘There's another level you can play as you're riding down the hall to the operating room, and you can only play the last level as you fall asleep when you put on the mask,'” Hess said.
EZ Induction flips the preoperative experience from one of increasing anxiety and worry to looking forward to playing the game again, Hess said.
“They’re focusing on something that's fun rather than being afraid.”
Expanding to other hospitals
A company in Columbus, Ohio, recently licensed the right to market EZ Induction to other hospitals, which could help ease the preoperative nerves of millions of children across the U.S.
Cincinnati Children's is the first medical center in the U.S. to use the device. The hospital received its first grant for the project in 2016.
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“What we like about this technology is it shows it's not just the physicians or researchers who can innovate and create products that help patients throughout the world,” said Abram Gordon, vice president of Innovation Ventures, the hospital's technology transfer and commercialization group.
“It can be people like Abby, who's a nurse practitioner,” he said. EZ Induction is Hess’ first invention.
Said Gordon, “It shows that innovation comes from throughout the institution, not just from the top.”
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How one nurse became a video game inventor to help ease kids' fears
