Co-designing virtual reality for children’s surgical education: A child-centric perspective

COVID-19 drastically reduced pediatric surgeries and doubled depression and anxiety symptoms among Canadian children. Perioperative anxiety has heightened, exacerbating pain, trauma, and surgical delays. Children with rare diseases such as Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI; brittle bone disease) are at increased risk for harm. Perioperative anxiety can be reduced through child-centric surgical education. A promising, unexplored avenue is the use of Virtual Reality (VR) software to help children understand complex surgical information and reduce anxiety. However, most existing VR software do not address children’s comprehensive information needs. 

Yi Wen (Jenny) Wang (RN, BScN, M.Ed.) is a trained nurse, educator, and PhD candidate in nursing at McGill University. She is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholar and the recipient of the CIHR Fellowship and ENRICH Doctoral Clinician Researcher salary award. Jenny completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2019 and Master of Education in 2021 at McGill University. Her work integrates childhood ethics and art to foster children’s voices, ensuring that health resources are created with children, for children. Jenny is interested in examining the lived experiences of acute and chronically ill children using arts-based methods.  Her doctoral research will leverage virtual reality technology to develop an innovative educational curriculum for children's surgery via co-design and patient/stakeholder engagement.