Reducing Children's Distress Towards Flu Vaccinations

University of Calgary

Status: Completed

Conditions: Children's Distress During Flu Vaccination

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01529021

E 23795

Details and patient eligibility

About

Millions of children in North America receive an annual flu vaccination, many of whom are at risk of experiencing severe distress. Children frequently use technologically advanced devices such as computers and cell phones. Based on this familiarity, the investigators introduced another sophisticated device - a humanoid robot to- interact with children during their vaccination. The investigators hypothesized that these children would experience less distress than children who did not have this interaction.

Full description

57 children (30 male; age, mean + SD: 6.87 + 1.34 years) were randomly assigned to a vaccination session with a nurse who used standard administration procedures, or with a robot who was programmed to use cognitive-behavioral strategies with them while a nurse administered the vaccination. Measures of distress were completed by children, parents, nurses, and researchers.

Enrollment: 57 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 5 to 9 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• ages 5-9 years,
• boys and girls

Exclusion criteria

• children with pervasive developmental disability

Trial design

57 participants in 2 patient groups

humanoid robot distration

Description:

The robot NAO, academic edition (Aldebaran Robotics) was used in this study. Some of its features include an on-board fully programmable computer CPU: x86 AMD Geode with 500 MHz, 256 MB SDRAM and 1 GB flash memory, WiFi (802.11g) and Ethernet, two cameras with up to 30 frames per second, two hands with self adaptive gripping abilities, force sensitive sensors on its arms and feet to perceive contact with objects, Light Emission Diodes in its eyes and body, four microphones to identify the source of sounds, and two loud speakers for communication where tone and voice pitch can be modified in real-time. It runs on a native Linux Operating system platform and can be programmed using a proprietary SDK called NaoQi, or in C, C++, Ruby and Urbi, which makes it compatible with other robot simulators such as Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

control

Description:

standard care procedures were used during the vaccination