Justyną Siemionow, prof. UG from the Institute of Pedagogy of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Gdańsk, is interviewed by mgr Magdalena Nieczuja-Goniszewska, press spokesperson for the University of Gdańsk.

- We arranged this interview in connection with the finalisation of the Mobile Hospital - Digital Counselling Environment for Children and Families project, which has been ongoing for some time now. Please tell us how it started.

- We started the project in August 2023. It is the result of my Finnish contacts from many, many years ago. I have been cooperating with the Turku University of Applied Sciences practically since 2016. I have been to TUAS several times, using the Erasmus+ programme. I have given lectures there, met with the staff, and talked to various scientists. And then, one day, I was asked if our university would like to join this project as a partner. I didn't know the people we were going to be working with at all, but after a few conversations, we concluded that it was possible. The application we submitted to apply for funding was preceded by many hours of online meetings. I would like to add that, apart from us and Finland, there is also a partner from Sweden in the project - Karolinska University Hospital. Preparations for the application were quite complicated due to the complex and different working styles of the partners and different procedures, etc. But we succeeded, and it turned out that we got funding, so I was very happy. I must emphasise that our team from the University of Gdańsk is doing a lot; we are trying very hard. The leader of the whole project praises us a lot because we are not only doing what is in our tasks, but much more. On our side, we are mainly evaluating this application, but we have also prepared its content.

- Let's remind ourselves what the project is about.

- The project is generally very cool in its assumptions, although it concerns something that may not be very revealing because these types of applications are already available. Our application, which will be available on your phone or some other device, can help children and their parents/guardians get used to issues related to the hospital, examinations and other treatment-related issues. As I mentioned, there are quite a few of these apps on the market, but what makes our app special is that it is versatile enough to be used by children in kindergarten age and older, as well as their parents. And it was the role of our team to show the perception, understanding, thinking, the messages that reach the child at this age, how they perceive the surrounding world. This application has been prepared taking into account all these developmental aspects. The Finnish and Swedish partners, on the other hand, were responsible for the issues of nurses and working with the healthcare service. We do not train nurses at our university, although now I think that if a similar project were to be carried out in the future, we could run it with, for example, the Medical University of Gdańsk as part of the Fahrenheit University. In any case, the medical staff agreed with the scientists on what should be taken into account and what to pay attention to when designing this application. Especially, since there are so many such applications on the market, ours had to stand out in some way. And so we prepared it so that a child could use the application safely on their own, but because we, i.e. the team from the University of Greifswald, thought that such contact with the hospital is also very difficult for parents, who are accompanied by stress and anxiety about their child, we made sure that the application also helps parents to cope with their emotions and to share them with their child. If parents can cope with their own experiences, they will be all the more able to help their child. It's a bit like on an aeroplane - first put on your own oxygen mask so that you are able to help others. Therefore, the application is designed so that the parent goes through it with the child to encourage them to do so. It is also designed in such a way that you can start it at any time and stop it at any time. Animated characters guide the child around the hospital and talk about it in a way that is accessible to a child of several years of age, familiarising the child with hospital reality. You could say that it is like a 3D game.

The child clicks and enters, decides whether they want to see this or another image. Smiling, animated characters, generated by artificial intelligence, encourage them to get to know the different corners of the hospital. The selection of suitable characters took a long time and was preceded by many hours of discussion. Preparations are currently underway to place this application on our server at the University of Gdańsk and start testing it.

- Why on a university server and not for download on Google Play, for example?

I think that if it is an app developed by us, it will inspire more trust in parents and it will be more difficult to hack it or to upload content that should not be there. We want parents/guardians to feel completely safe when using the app.

- You said that working in such an international project team, where different working cultures collide, is not easy. Can you say something more about it? Because it is less often talked about.

- It's a clash of different working models. We often ‘pull’ many threads at once, sometimes we are ‘overloaded’ with responsibilities and if necessary - we sit in our free time and at night, on weekends, to finish something, prepare for lectures, etc., etc. Because we have to and we are used to it. Scandinavians, on the other hand, both Swedes and Finns, simply work from Monday to Friday. You do as much as you can do. I love their saying: you did the best you could. Even sending emails at the weekend is tactless. They don't read them, but if they do read them on Monday, they will perceive it as pressure and tactlessness. They value their time very highly. That's what I would like to learn from our partners, and I must admit that I am slowly making progress. This difference was visible in the work model, but I think it is interesting to learn from each other. Sometimes I look at it with envy, and other times I think to myself that it is impossible for us to work like that. But the most important thing is that despite these differences in working style, we managed to carry out the project very harmoniously - the application is ready. We are slowly approaching the end of the project.

- Are the differences in working style the only ones you and the UG team had to deal with during the project?

- No. Finland, Sweden and we also differ in the hospital care model. Although we have nothing to be ashamed of. Hospitals in Poland, especially those for the youngest patients, are colourful, very well equipped, and child and parent-friendly. However, my colleague involved in this project, dr Patrycja Brudzińska, and I decided that we would not share photos of our hospitals in the project. Also because we happened to be there at a time of high child morbidity, it was not possible to enter the wards and take photos. The project has its successive stages of implementation, and a time frame is set for each task.

- Are these photos of the entire hospital, different wards, or did you focus only on the children's ward?

- The children's ward. They are usually more colourful and different. In addition to the photos and animations, the medical research conducted by each team on specific medical and practical issues was important: what are the most common illnesses, what are the most common cases currently occurring in hospitals and what do children's wards face on a daily basis. It turned out that it is very similar in all three countries. And the paths in the application are arranged according to the disease, according to the current needs of the child related to the given ailments - so if, for example, they have diabetes, have broken their leg, are waiting for an operation or have pneumonia, they simply click on this path and it shows them what can happen, what they might encounter, which specialists will be at the hospital, etc. Everything is described in an accessible way, adapted to the way a small child thinks and perceives, because that was very important to us and it was up to us to make sure it was accessible. It is a very intuitive app and I think that children, who are increasingly familiar with the virtual world, can safely use it. We have invited a group of children and their parents to test the app on 12 April 2025. We can't wait!

- How many people are in the group and who are the children? How old are they?

- There will be 15 of us. Due to the legal requirements, we also invited the parents, even though that was the biggest hurdle. But we managed to invite the parents. The children are aged 5 to 8, because the idea is to have toddlers. Both older children and teenagers can play with this app, but younger children usually cope with such situations less well and need adult support. During these workshops, we not only want to see how the child reacts to the application, but we also want to see how the parent interacts with the child while using it. It is also important to us that parents feel that this is a tool for them too and that it is worth recommending. At this point, I would like to emphasise the role of the POZYTYWNIPL Foundation, which cooperates with us and thanks to this cooperation we can test the application.

- Parents, as you have already mentioned, are often more afraid for their children and what happens to them in connection with the disease than the little patients themselves, who may not understand many things yet.

- Exactly, but also using the application together is very important in the context of children's safe use of the web, so that you can also explain something to your child that they may ask about. This application is designed to encourage interaction between parents and children. It allows you to share emotions, and it is very important for a child to see that their parents experience similar emotions, such as fear, but know how to deal with them. Both Dr Patrycja Brudzińska and I have experience in working with children and parents. And I am convinced that these parents can also calm down a little and become emotionally calmer thanks to this application. And this will also affect the child. It is also a great help for doctors and nurses because the parent's nervousness and stress can often hinder or ‘block’ the process of recovery. In addition, the so-called white coat in the hospital can cause anxiety, contrary to appearances, because we now have medical personnel in coloured coats, the syndrome still exists.

- Did you conduct such research during this project?

- Yes, we also did such research and we would like to write an article after the end of this project about the use of this type of application not only in the medical sector, but also in children's education. Although so far there has been no requirement to prepare scientific texts in implementation projects. However, a colleague from the Swedish project told us that this has already changed in the Erasmus funds, that they also expect the scientific component to be added. And that is good news for us, i.e. for the university, because universities that are not entirely scientifically oriented will be looking for partners like us, like the University of Gdańsk, who will also provide a scientific component. By the way, our university is very well perceived in the European university community, which makes us a good partner with excellent staff and research potential. Going back to the research, we found that parents, for example, have the most trouble with specific medical vocabulary or short doctor's announcements. A doctor in Poland has a lot of these patients and often cannot devote as much time to young patients as they would like. This is where the difference between us and Scandinavia, for example, becomes apparent. There is a room where the parent sits and has tea or coffee, and the doctor sits with them and has time for a conversation. It is also possible to contact the staff by email. So, during the project, we thought about what we could do to help the doctor communicate with the parent. You can google everything and check what the doctor says, but that is not enough for the parent. So maybe there is a thought, an idea, of what to do to change that? Doctors, but also nurses, are key people in the treatment process. What's more, the so-called auxiliary staff also has a great role to play in the hospital on the children's ward.

Here in Poland, doctors try very hard. I spoke to doctors in Malbork, where there is a small children's ward, and we started working with this ward before all these flu-related illnesses started appearing. The doctors there said that they know that there are such applications and that they have training on the subject. It is not a super novelty for Polish doctors, but they do not use it. So we hope that this pilot will be successful, that it will be a lot of fun for the children and, at the same time, support for, as I said, parents and medical staff.

- What's next with the app? - We already know when it will be tested, how it was prepared and that it will not be downloaded by other apps like the Google store.

- After the tests and making the app available through the university website, we will promote it. It is really solid work, well thought out and worked through. And it can bring many benefits. It was very important to us that this application stands out due to the very deep, substantive preparation provided by the University of Gdańsk. Of course, we are not giving a psychology lecture to a small child there, but you can really see the psychological and pedagogical foundations, this component, which is what our work was dedicated to. We will also promote the application among students who will work in kindergartens, including special education, because the application can also be fun for children, even older ones, e.g. with intellectual disabilities, who will find it helpful to understand what is happening in the hospital and why. This application will be completely free to download. The project was financed by the European Union and should simply serve the public.

We still have a few months of intensive promotional work ahead of us for this project, and we will also be refining the application ‘until the last minute’. This project was so intense that, on the one hand, I am glad that the project phase is coming to an end, and on the other hand, I have already prepared another project with the same university in Turku, which concerned an application for social workers, but unfortunately it came at a time when there were many projects and fewer funds, which, as we know, is related to the situation in the world, and unfortunately it did not receive this funding. This is another experience we have had together with Turku University of Applied Sciences. I hope they will improve this project and submit it again, so that we are still considered for it. I am convinced that we will have more joint projects with Finland and Sweden. This project is a great professional and personal experience for our team, that is, me, Dr Patrycja Brudzińska, and Dr Katarzyna Wajszczyk, who joined the project in March 2025. We can learn a lot from our partners, but they also learn from us. Teamwork and project work are a ‘breeding ground’ for a scientist and teacher, because we can share these experiences with our students.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank dr Patrycja Brudzińska and dr Katarzyna Wajszczyk for working together on this project.

- Thank you for the interview.