Developing a Health Game to Prepare Preschool Children for Anesthesia: Formative Study

Reducing preoperative anxiety in children aged four to six requires specialized digital interventions that align with the developmental needs and emotional perceptions of the target demographic. By employing a child-centered design approach, developers can create serious games that effectively prepare young patients for anesthesia. This methodology prioritizes the active participation of children through playful workshops and iterative usability testing, ensuring that the resulting tools are not only intuitive and engaging but also clinically relevant for hospital settings.

The development process involved 42 preschool children across Finland and Iceland, who provided critical insights into hospital perceptions, emotional coping mechanisms, and preferred reward structures. These contributions informed the creation of a nine-level, multi-language game that integrates interactive exercises, realistic hospital footage, and narrative guidance. While the game proved highly functional, testing revealed that excessive narrative length during instructional segments hindered engagement, necessitating script revisions to maintain the attention of younger users.

These findings confirm that involving children in the design phase is both feasible and essential for the success of digital health tools. By prioritizing child-led feedback, developers can refine complex educational content to better address the specific anxieties associated with medical procedures. Ultimately, the integration of interactive, age-appropriate design strategies serves as a vital framework for improving the pediatric hospital experience, demonstrating that serious games can function as effective, credible tools for clinical preparation when they are built upon a foundation of direct user input.