173 - Picture This! in Your Waiting Room: scaling a multidisciplinary, community-informed intervention to encourage playful learning and improve family satisfaction in medical waiting spaces

Poster Number: 173
Publication Number: 173.316

Danielle C. Erkoboni, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Blue Bell, PA, United States; Danielle Sands, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, Oreland, PA, United States

Background: Pediatric waiting spaces present an opportunity for families to experience how playful learning can impact interactions with their child and to ease the challenges associated with waiting in medical spaces, especially in the context of the ongoing pandemic.

Objective: This project designed and evaluated playful learning murals in medical waiting spaces that promote parent-child engaged playful learning and patient family satisfaction and can be easily scaled across diverse healthcare settings.

Design/Methods: Conceptualization was led by a multidisciplinary team of administrators, child life specialists, facilities consultants, pediatricians, parent-child interaction experts and graphic design artists. An iterative series of focus groups with key stakeholders recruited by snowballing informed the content of the installations. Parent interviews in an urban pediatric primary care clinic were used to refine the installations and assess family satisfaction impact. All qualitative data were analyzed for emergent themes using modified grounded theory. With murals installed, in-person observations of parents and children in pediatric primary care waiting spaces, including conversational turns, were performed, and analyzed across 3 sites: one with Picture This! (our playful learning installations), one with no installation, and one with a simply play structure.

Results: 30 hospital and city-wide leaders in children’s health and early childhood learning participated in focus group discussions iteratively informed the development and implementation of 8 mural-based installations (see Figure One for two examples). These murals, designed as life sized story book pages, a local city context and images rich in letters, numbers, colors and diversity. Interviews with 22 parents and 10 providers were used to iteratively refine the installations, including both the display modality, location and discussion prompt content. Observation of 98 families across 3 medical waiting space types showed significantly more conversational turns with Picture This! present (see Figure Two). Parents reported less stress and improved waiting experience at installation sites.Conclusion(s): Picture This! creates opportunities for parents and children to experience the type of interactions that can shape a child’s early learning and ease patient experience in times of increased waiting. This multi-phase, interdisciplinary, community-focused approach is increasingly important during healthcare strains associated with the ongoing pandemic.
FIGURE ONE: Sample MuralsPicture This! murals were designed as large storybook pages to bring playful learning to life on medical waiting space walls.
FIGURE TWO: Impact of Picture This! on conversational turnsConversational turns between a parent and a child have been shown to be a critical component of early brain development. Playful learning installations, like Picture This!, can create interactions that teach parent-child interactions rich in conversational turns.