The Effect of Digital Storytelling Applied to Children in Preoperative Period

Overview

Digital storytelling is the craft and art of exploring different media and software applications to communicate stories in new and powerful ways using digital media. Because new digital tools are inexpensive and widely available, digital storytelling tends to be highly personal and at the same time universal. All in all, it is a very powerful form of communication. Digital storytelling applications include short (three to five minute) films with pictures, video clips, soundtrack and narration; storytelling performances and talks supported by media slideshows or interactive presentations; and web-based applications, including streaming media, podcasts, and blogs. When looking at the literature, different approaches to using digital storytelling are seen: it is used in the education of health professionals, in academic education, for digital story development and research, and as a therapeutic care intervention. Studies on the use of digital stories in the field of health have just begun to gain popularity, and it is noteworthy that the studies in the health services literature are not yet at the desired level and prevalence. Healthcare is a unique environment to use digital storytelling intervention as a therapeutic purpose in addition to gaining knowledge in all our activities. Using digital stories; It is thought that it will provide significant benefits to parents/children and health professionals by filling the gap in the literature in order to reduce the negative emotional behaviors and anxiety of children undergoing day surgery in the preoperative period, as an informative intervention that can attract the attention of their children while having fun.

The type of study planned is randomized controlled experimental design. The study group is divided into two as intervention and control groups. The intervention and control groups will be selected by simple random sampling method from among the volunteer participants who meet the inclusion criteria. Power analysis was performed to determine the sample size. It was observed that the effect size obtained in the reference study (Chow et al. 2017) was quite strong (d=0.96). As a result of the power analysis we performed, assuming that a lower level of effect size could be obtained (d=0.8), it was calculated that 80% power could be obtained at the 95% confidence level when at least 52 people (at least 26 people for each group) were included in the study. Considering that there may be data losses, the sample size was planned as 72 people (36 people for each group), taking approximately 30% more than the number of samples calculated as a result of the power analysis.