It is especially hard for children to make the time pass faster while waiting to be called to the operating room. The Hans Christian Andersen Children’s Hospital in Odense has found a solution to this problem.
In a niche in the middle of a 145-meter-long corridor called the Fairy Tale Corridor, you can hear whoops, giggles and laughter as a child and parents meet on the interactive floor, WizeFloor, which the children’s hospital has installed in the ceiling. Here, children can click their hands and feet on the large floor screen and play different games either alone or against each other.
The hospital was among the first in the healthcare sector to install the interactive floors back in 2013 in both the Adventure Corridor and the cancer ward. The idea then, as now, was to get children out of hospital beds and stimulate them physically and mentally, thus speeding up their recovery.
“It provides a distraction for the children and means that they have the opportunity to spend their time actively instead of just lying in their wards waiting to get well,” explains Mette Sorang Kjær, welfare coordinator and social educator at H.C. Andersen Children and Youth Hospital. Andersen Children and Youth Hospital.
The living floors make particular sense at a time when the hospital is challenged by the stricter cleaning framework imposed by the Corona pandemic. It works well now that toys have been removed and living spaces have been closed down.
“It has been an obvious success and the solution is so adapted to the pandemic because it allows for play without touching anything. It has lived up to the set of values we originally wanted, namely an offer that can lure children out of bed and be used around the clock without cleaning up and at the same time bring children together across diagnoses and specialties. Today, the solution has unfolded with yet another facet,” explains Mette Sorang Kjær.
In her work as a welfare coordinator, she has been tasked with creating the best environment for the children in the hospital. In her search for possible solutions, she came across the interactive floor.
The floor is freely accessible, so there are a lot of children and parents who naturally go and use it when they are there. There are no rules on how to use it.
It is used both by the fasting child waiting with his or her parents to be called for surgery. Or a girl spending her waiting time with the hero of the game. Or it could be family and siblings coming from far and wide to visit the new baby brother.
“It gets the children out of bed when you, as a mother or father, ask if you should go and break some balloons. And I can see that something happens in this relationship with those who meet on the floor. A community is created when someone plays soccer, stomps balloons or plays another game with their father. And it also works if you are in a wheelchair,” she explains.
WizeFloor contains a wide variety of activities, ranging from quizzes and memory games to balloon games and categorization games. They are designed to stimulate interactivity, collaboration and inclusion for all users on the floor.
