Hospital programs to treat childhood anxiety. Review of evidence

Is obvious all that shinning?

Abstract

There are still few hospitals that consider it important to include in their services a program that helps to decrease the level of anxiety in the patients. However, recently it is possible to find different initiatives and programs in the pediatric area for this purpose. Initiatives born under the current "humanization of hospitals" trying to achieve, with greater or lesser fortune, a closeness and better assimilation of the surgical protocols present in a hospital. Personally we believe that there is nothing more human than to exercise our office. Exercising medicine and curing a disease implies humanity in itself, even if it is applied under scientific evidence and seeking an adequate effectiveness. There is nothing more human than the fact of healing others, although in that way science is prioritized over comfort and closeness. Therefore, the authors are in favor of the new, and poorly called, humanization of health but, first ensuring, proper care.

We are therefore witnessing the birth of proposals and initiatives that try to reduce the anxiety level of our smaller patients, who try to bring our medical activity closer to the daily life and try to transform the instrumentalization and modernization of medicine into something understandable to all. Something positive and desirable.

However we can not forget that medicine is based on the scientific method, and that without it, these initiatives can remain in a mere superficial marketing. They may even endanger the performance and health outcomes of the health care activity itself. This does not mean in any way that the aspects that concern the psyche and the emotional part of the patient are not important. In fact they are a fundamental part of the medical activity but always from a scientific and consensual point of view.

That is why it is always desirable to quantify results and evaluate aspects that aim to improve our work. In the case of childhood preoperative anxiety, initiatives and protocols have been developed that try to alleviate the causes and their consequences. The development of stories, toys, the presence of parents in anesthetic induction and other actions seem to be a current trend developed by some hospitals concerned about this issue. But what is the truth about it? How are these initiatives properly developed? And above all ... What is true in all this?