Doctors at the Michigan Medicine Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Center have discovered a new way to make telehealth visits, or online medical appointments, run smoother: the Barbie doll.
Dr. Alecia Daunter, medical director of pediatric inpatient rehabilitation at Michigan Medicine, founded the theory after her daughter gave her a Barbie doll in a wheelchair to use with her pediatric patients. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Daunter explained how a simple question from her daughter led to the findings.
“One day, I was at home playing with my daughter, and she asked what I did with my patients when they came to the clinic,” Daunter said. “I started to show her some of the things I do and think about in the clinic while demonstrating on the Barbie. It just clicked for me — it was so easy to demonstrate for her that I thought it would be helpful to try out with my patients. I started using Barbie regularly during my telehealth appointments, and some of my colleagues liked it so much that they started doing it too.”
Daunter said the Barbie allows physicians to demonstrate certain stretches and movements that patients are prescribed for rehabilitation purposes and to point to specific parts of the body for the patient to identify.
Telehealth appointments have grown in popularity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth numbers continue to remain higher than pre-pandemic levels, and 80% of physicians may continue to use online appointments. Online appointments also allow immunocompromised patients to stay at home and minimize in-person contact.
Dr. Alyssa Cook, Michigan Medicine resident and team member on Daunter’s study, said in an interview with The Daily that telehealth appointments may bring additional potential benefits.
“A lot of our patients have mobility difficulties getting in and out of the house,” Cook said. “Our spinal cord injury patients may have a big ordeal of having to get out of the house and transportation. So if some of these appointments can be done virtually, it also saves them a lot of energy and time and money.”
Daunter and her team led the study by conducting a series of telehealth visits. The patients consisted of 30 healthy children ages 4 to 17, accompanied by their parents or guardians. The experimental group was given verbal instructions alongside the demonstration of the Barbie doll while the control group, which the experimental group was compared to, was given verbal instructions but did not receive a Barbie doll demonstration.
The results suggested that those in the experiment group had much more efficient telehealth visits compared to those in the control group. Cook said efficacy was determined by the number of verbal prompts it took to complete a certain movement rather than how long the appointment took.
“What we really noticed is that it’s not necessarily taking less time to get there but that I didn’t need to give them as many verbal prompts,” Cook said. “In the intervention group, I had Barbie and fed the same verbal script, but then showed them the position I wanted to see them in as well as the motion. And what I noticed is the parents of the participants understood what angle the camera (required for) what I needed to see, as well as they just came more naturally.”
The research team took note of both the number of verbal prompts given to the groups, as well as the ability of the patient to read body language and understand feedback. The experimental group needed fewer prompts than the control group to understand feedback from physicians.
Daunter continues to implement the Barbie doll in her daily telehealth visits. She said she has inspired many surrounding doctors to start this practice in the future. Third-year Medical student Rachel O’Reggio said she was grateful for the advancements and hopes to see a change in policies in order to improve inclusivity for those who may fare better with visual demonstrations in the telehealth world.
“I’m always an advocate for policies,” O’Reggio said. “For example, maybe enforcing a policy that says that there needs to be some type of visual prop for patients in a virtual setting or encouraging them in some way by using a policy that says something along those lines because that gives incentive and drives home the message of why we feel this is important. From the research that I read today … it showed that they felt like they had a really good session.”
Daily Staff Reporter Chiara Dettin can be reached at chiarald@umich.edu.