Giving Children a Voice in Paediatric Anaesthesia

Patient, Parent and Clinician Voices - Establishing National and International Research Priorities for Paediatric Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine

This project will identify the research priorities for paediatric anaesthesia and perioperative medicine in participating countries and highlight areas where further research and information can be provided to optimise the experience of children undergoing medical interventions.

This is expected to have significant positive impacts on patient and family engagement and interest in research within the community and aids to plan patient/ family-centred studies.

Prospective online surveys will be conducted to generate national priority research topics. Three separate series of surveys will be conducted:

1. Children and young people aged 6 to 16 years of age
2. Parents and caregivers
3. Clinicians

The first round of surveys will be broad idea generating surveys. The survey will consist of a short introduction and demographic questions followed by space to input three free text suggestions for research topics. In order not to bias the suggestions, we will not provide any examples of thematic prompts, research ideas will be entirely de novo. These surveys will be open for three months.

A second round of online surveys will then be conducted to prioritise national longlist of research ideas. Respondents will be asked to pick what they consider to be the 10 most important research ideas from the longlist.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients aged 6-16 years
• Caregivers of patients aged 6-16 years
• Clinicians working in paediatric perioperative medicine

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients <6 and >16 years
• Residence not in Switzerland
• Inability to understand one of the 3 study languages (german, french, italian)