The following books or resources have been reviewed by a BSS member:
1. What’s up with Jen?’ (Review date 17/4/2010)
Medikidz explain OSA
Medikidz is an initiative in children’s health education founded by a medical journalist in New Zealand. The organisation aims to provide accessible medical information to young patients. This multi-media enterprise comprises topic specific information booklets as well as a website –
www.medikidz.com which offers a medical encyclopedia for children, a virtual human body and a social network site. Information is conveyed by superhero cartoon characters who live in Mediland, a planet shaped like the human body including ‘..a bum that poops…and it’s a big place so it’s quite a poop’. Each character represents an organ system for example ‘Pump – the guy you come to for the low down on your heart and blood vessels’.
The OSA booklet is a brilliant synthesis of a pacy storyline and excellent cartoon graphics which cover key educational messages in a fun but informative way. Were that medical education was always this much fun! Jen the main character is suitably chubby and falls asleep in class, she also falls asleep into her birthday cake (perhaps she has narcolepsy too!). She is whisked away in a spacecraft by the superheros to visit Mediland where she tours the upper and lower respiratory tract and learns about the effects of OSA on sleep quality and oxygenation as well as associated symptoms like bed wetting are well explained. Investigation and treatment options are discussed and well illustrated and the authors don’t overlook the health promotion messages. At the end Jen is a fully signed up and compliant patient: ‘I’m going to wear my mask every night and get on top of my OSA thing-prontissimo…..either way I’m going to get out, exercise and eat properly to lose a few pounds’. I can see how this would be a really useful tool in paediatric sleep medicine to demystify OSA for children (and their parents) and possibly even improve compliance.
Zoe and Isobel Holley (7 & 10 years) kindly agreed to review the booklet for me. They were both able to read it independently and found it sufficiently engaging to read through to the end. They particularly liked the ‘toilet humour element added by the ‘Gastro’ superhero who ‘farts’. Many of the target audience for OSA would be too young to read this independently but I would imagine it would be accessible to younger children when read by a parent.
I would highly recommend this to paediatric clinics. At £6.99 it may be a little expensive to hand out to all NHS patients but nonetheless is a very helpful resource.
The views expressed by reviewers are theirs alone. The BSS Executive attempts to filter content deemed as commercially conflicted, inaccurate, or misleading.