Lead investigator: Prof Faith Gibson, University of Surrey
Funded by CCLG
Award: £63,425.00
Awarded December 2017
Children often have little input in consultations with professionals; conversations tend to be between parents and professionals. Even when a child is more involved, they may experience difficulty describing their symptoms/feelings or asking questions. For some children, this may mean that their symptoms/problems are under-reported causing unnecessary suffering. For others, they may not receive the symptom information they would like, leaving them with worries.
Sisom is a computer/tablet-based application designed to help children, to give them a voice in healthcare encounters. Sisom uses animation, speech and sound, to help a child create an avatar and visit islands where they identify symptoms and concerns before their consultation with professionals. It was developed with children; they contributed to the child-friendly terms to describe symptoms, graphics used in the application and design. (Demo: http://www.communicaretools.org/research-projects/sisom/).
The system creates a report, which can be used to aid discussion with professionals. Sisom was developed for use with children with cancer and heart disease in Norway, and has been translated into English.
This project looks to see what happens when Sisom is introduced into practice, in two sites and settings (out-patients - Great Ormond Street Hospital, in-patient – Leeds) to find out from those using it (children/parents/carers/professionals), what works well, what works less well and what information we need to understand how uptake was enabled as well as what difference it made.
We will gather information through: process mapping, observing consultations, interviews and questionnaires. By improving communication of symptoms and feelings, Sisom has the potential to: improve the experience of children undergoing treatment; help professionals ensure symptoms are managed more effectively; provide better information and improve quality of care for children.
This work will set a clear path into a larger implementation and evaluation study which would be the subject of a further grant proposal.