There is a consensus that the hospital experience is stressful for children and leads to anxiety and fear. Long term effects of stress and anxiety may affect children's physiological, social, and academic functioning. The pediatric patients experience these undesirable emotional responses particularly after separation of the parents or before anesthesia in the case of a surgery experience where they have to go through a body exam with a nurse.
Different types of therapy have been explored in the past to decrease children's stress during the hospital experience. Pediatric health care professionals used, for example, animal-assisted therapy, clown caring, toy-based technologies, and ride-on cars as interventions to help reduce children's undesirable emotional responses.
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the use of a ride-on car on physiological responses, distress, and anxiety before the physical examination inside the hospital or during the preoperative experience .