by Abigail Ramirez
Daily Lobo
Smiley faces, fish, suns and many other stickers were used to decorate medical devices and reduce patients' fear of them, according to a study done by researchers at UNM's Health Sciences Center.
The study was published in the August issue of Journal of Family Practice.
The study, which took place from April to June 2005, measured patients' reactions to decorated and regular medical devices, such as needles and scalpels, said Dr. Wilmer Sibbitt, medical inventor and head of the study.
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With regular medical devices, people were most afraid of scalpels, syringes, IV bags and butterfly needles, he said.
Looking at the decorated medical devices reduced all levels of patients' anxiety, aversion and fear, he said.
Sibbitt and three undergraduate students showed the decorated and conventional medical devices to 35 adults and 25 children at the UNM Hospital, he said.
"People in general really hate needles," he said. "There is a high level of dislike, fear and anxiety provoked by needles, scalpels and syringes. People don't even like IV bags because it makes them uncomfortable."
Patients used smiling and frowning faces to indicate their anxiety, aversion and fear toward the medical device, he said.
"People still recognized what the device was, but by decorating it, it completely changed their emotional response to it," he said.
Sibbitt analyzed his findings by using his experience in brain research at the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery Institute at UNM, he said.
"I think what's happening when a person sees a threatening device, it activates certain areas of response," he said. "When they see a decoration on top of the device, it interferes with that response they have of fear, anxiety and aversion. It activates other portions of the brain and makes their original responses decrease."
Results of the study showed 100 percent of children and 95 percent of adults felt decorated devices should be available to children, he said.
Only 30 percent of adults felt decorated devices should be available to adults, he said.
"They said adults should be able to take the pain and shouldn't have something like that, but the study shows that adults have a tremendous fear of needles and medical devices," he said.
Other methods used to help distract people from medical devices are to look away, listen to music, look at an image on the wall or think about something else, he said.
Decoration of medical devices is similar, but instead of imagining something else, the patient is seeing something that is viewed as threatening and having a different reaction to it, he said.
"People decorate walls to relax people, but this is meant to kind of manipulate their mind," he said. "Patients all know their mind is being manipulated, and they like the mere fact that someone goes and makes them feel better about something."
UNM filed a patent on the idea of decorating medical devices, he said.
Sibbitt said these decorations have to be created in a factory for sterility purposes and to save health care providers time from decorating each medical device.
If manufacturers produced these decorated medical devices, they should cost only a little bit more than a regular syringe, he said. For example, a regular syringe costs 10 cents and a decorated syringe could cost 11 cents, he said.
The devices would work best in pediatric wards, family-practice clinics and chemotherapy clinics, he said.
It would make a big difference not just for patients, but for doctors and nurses as well, he said.
"We have to do brutal things to patients that we don't like doing, but we have to or the patient dies," he said. "If we can make patients feel better, it tells patients we care about them."
Sibbitt said the idea of decorating medical devices came from a winged catheter.
A winged catheter is a needle with plastic wings on the sides, he said. He noticed how a winged catheter looks like a butterfly and wondered why its wings aren't made to look like a butterfly, he said.
"Then I thought, 'Well, why does it have to be only on these butterfly needles?' It can be on anything," he said.
The idea of decorated medical devices should be very popular and used in hospitals soon, he said.
"I'm about 95 percent certain that somebody is going to start making these somewhere in the world," he said. "We will see these in the next couple of years. It's so popular that by nature it's going to happen in about two years. You will see them - maybe even faster."
