Pediatric Adventure

“Aaaarrrr ye ready?” the hospital technologist growls, handing the patient a black-felt pirate hat. “Yer pirate ship awaits, Cap’n.”

The child draws the hat to his head. Skull-and-crossbones sneer through the waiting room, as if proclaiming, “I’m not just a patient. I’m a pirate.”

The 7-year-old’s mother holds his hand as they walk to the CT room. She assures him that he’s going to have a great adventure. They’ve come here— Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC—to have his sinus cavities scanned.

As the mini-swashbuckler nears the room, a set of brown planks extend into the hallway, leading to his ship. Soon there is crisp blue water beneath and the subtle smell of coconut in the air.

“Welcome to Pirate Island,” a nurse says, as the boy enters the room.

On this day, Duncan Auer is a pirate.

Duncan’s boat is actually a specially decorated CT machine. The exam bed has been made to look like a hull. The CT tube: a wooden steering wheel. The water and planks below: brown and blue decals on the floor. The coconut smell: an aromatherapy scent—piña colada—churning from a black vaporizer in the corner.

Watch the video
Go behind the scenes with with the designers of GE’s Adventure Series™.
There are seven other rooms besides Pirate Island, whose themes include a jungle, a campground and an underwater fantasy. They are part of a pilot GE Healthcare program called the GE Adventure Series™, developed in partnership with Children’s Hospital, to help reduce stress in children undergoing imaging scans. The series is currently not commercially available.

“Children are very cooperative,” says Duncan’s mother, Liz Auer, who works as a preschool teacher. “If you can use your imagination and encourage [kids] to use theirs, you can make any experience into something that can be fun or, at the very least, relaxing and not stressful,” she says.

And while all the decals, costumes and role-playing may seem at once whimsical as well as obvious. They are not.