Mitigating Children’s Pain and Anxiety during Blood Draw Using Social Robots

Abstract

Young pediatric patients who undergo venipuncture or capillary blood sampling often experience high levels of pain and anxiety. This often results in distressed young patients and their parents, increased treatment times, and a higher workload for healthcare professionals. Social robots are a new and promising tool to mitigate children’s pain and anxiety. This study aims to purposefully design and test a social robot for mitigating stress and anxiety during blood draw of children. We first programmed a social robot based on the requirements expressed by experienced healthcare professionals during focus group sessions. Next, we designed a randomized controlled experiment in which the social robot was applied as a distraction method to measure its capacity to mitigate pain and anxiety in children during blood draw in a children’s hospital setting. Children who interacted with the robot showed significantly lower levels of anxiety before actual blood collection, compared to children who received regular medical treatment. Children in the middle classes of primary school (aged 6–9) seemed especially sensitive to the robot’s ability to mitigate pain and anxiety before blood draw. Children’s parents overall expressed strong positive attitudes toward the use and effectiveness of the social robot for mitigating pain and anxiety. The results of this study demonstrate that social robots can be considered a new and effective tool for lowering children’s anxiety prior to the distressing medical procedure of blood collection.

Interaction Matters: The Effect of Touching the Social Robot PARO on Pain and Stress is Stronger When Turned ON vs. OFF

“…Our findings are in line with previous studies which found that human-robot social interaction is effective in diminishing clinical pain. This effect was found in studies where the HRI was without any physical contact with the robot (Beran et al, 2013;Yasemin et al, 2016;Ruocco et al, 2019;Trost et al, 2020;Smakman et al, 2021) as well as in studies where the HRI involved touch (Such as hugging the robot and/or stroking it) (Tanaka et al, 2012;Eskander et al, 2013;Okita, 2013;Pu et al, 2019). In our previous experiment (Geva et al, 2020) we demonstrated that touching a social robot is more effective for pain reduction than social interaction with the robot that does not include physical contact.…”

“…For example, several studies demonstrated that HRI can increase positive emotions among healthy participants (Crossman et al, 2018;Geva et al, 2020;Hoffmann and Krämer, 2021). HRI was also found to reduce student stress during final exams (Edwards et al, 2020), reduce stress and anxiety among hospitalized children undergoing a medical procedure (Beran et al, 2013;Okita, 2013;Beran et al, 2015;Ruocco et al, 2019;Trost et al, 2019;Trost et al, 2020;Smakman et al, 2021) and among older adults living in senior healthcare settings (Góngora Alonso et al, 2019;Pu et al, 2019). It is important to note that all the mentioned studies did not report the role of plain touch compared to social touch in HRI.…”

Social robots in pediatric oncology: opinions of health care providers

“…Furthermore, our findings about the most valuable scenario and function for social robots are in line with the reported use of a social robot for distraction during needle insertion. [15,22] However, little value was seen in using social robots for educational purposes, even though many social robots are used for this purpose outside the field of pediatric oncology, for example in children with diabetes. [23,24] Furthermore, health care providers saw remarkably little value in using social robots with regard to sleep, even though 2 recent reviews reported sleep disruptions are frequent in children with cancer during treatment, [25,26] and no effective sleep interventions are known to exist.…”

Penggunaan Robot Sebagai Distraksi pada Anak Saat Tindakan Venipuncture

“…Berdasarkan penelitian Smakman dan kawan-kawan, robot yang berbentuk manusia sangat menarik minat terutama anak-anak usia sekolah, pada penelitian ini, Smakman membagi kategori berdasarkan usia dengan pembagian kategori; Lower Class in Primary Education, Middle Class in Primary Education dan Hinger Class in Primary Education. Berdasarkan penelitian ini terdapat perbedaan nilai skala nyeri dan skala kecemasan yang lebih rendah pada kelompok Middle Class in Primary Education dibandingkan kelompok kontrol bahkan terhadap kelompok intervensi kategori Lower Class in Primary Education, dan Hinger Class in Primary Education (Smakman et al, 2021).…”

“…Sedangkan pada penelitian lainnya yaitu penelitian Smakman (Smakman et al, 2021), Trost (Trost, 2019), dan Farrier (Farrier et al, 2020 mendapatkan hasil penelitian skala nyeri dan skala kecemasan yang lebih rendah pada kelompok anak yang berinteraksi dengan robot dibandingkan dengan anak yang mendapatkan perawatan standar.…”