Getting Better- a simple, cheap intervention that supports more and more seriously ill children.

Could a printed book help seriously ill children facing an operation understand their treatment journey and alleviate procedural anxiety? This premise is at the heart of what this design intervention is about. Great Ormond Street Hospital in London is pre-eminent in paediatric medicine, but the communication between clinician and patient can sometimes be woefully inadequate, despite best intentions. Paediatric anxiety can have serious effects on the short-term and long-term psychological wellbeing of children. It can also have serious financial ramifications for hospitals. Any delayed operation, even for a few minutes, can be inordinately expensive. If a child fails to comply with their medical regimen (e.g as 30% of transplant patients do) then the consequences can be not only costly but potentially very dangerous too.

Get Better Books have helped solve this problem with a series of honed interventions, each testing this hypothesis and receiving incredible feedback from not just the patients and their families but from medical community.