• Jill MacLaren Chorney, Carrie Torrey, Ronald Blount, Christine E McLaren, Wen-Pin Chen, and Zeev N Kain.
• Department of Anesthesiology, University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA, USA. jill.chorney@iwk.nshealth.ca
• Anesthesiology. 2009 Dec 1;111(6):1290-6.

BackgroundTo date, no study has evaluated the impact of specific healthcare provider and parent behaviors on children's distress and coping during anesthesia induction.MethodExtensive digital video data were collected on 293 two- to ten-yr-old children undergoing anesthesia induction with a parent present. Anesthesiologist, nurse, and parent behavior and children's distress and coping were coded using the Revised Preoperative Child-Adult Medical Procedure Interaction Scale administered using specialized coding software.ResultsAnesthesiologists and parents engaged in higher rates of most behaviors than nurses. Overall, adult emotion-focused behavior such as empathy and reassurance was significantly positively related to children's distress and negatively related to children's coping behaviors. Adult distracting behavior such as humor and distracting talk showed the opposite pattern. Medical reinterpretation by anesthesiologists was significantly positively related to children's coping behaviors, but the same behavior by parents was significantly positively related to children's distress.ConclusionsThe data presented here provide evidence for a relation between adult behaviors and children's distress and coping at anesthesia induction. These behaviors are trainable, and hence it is possible to test whether modifying physician behavior can influence child behavior in future studies.

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