The Study of Children's Emotional Responses and Its Application to the Redesign of the Traditional Dental Handpiece

Statistics show that children often feel fear around dentists even though visits to the dentist are a necessary practice. The fear not only provokes great emotional anxiety, but also inhibits the dentists’ ability to do their job. According to interviews conducted in this study, one of the main factors contributing to the anxiety is the design of dental equipment, especially the handpiece (dental drill). This paper presents the research and development process of redesigning a pediatric dental drill. The process examined not only the needs of pediatric dentists, but also the emotional effects the design had on children. Children’s emotional responses were studied by administering two different surveys. Many interesting insights were discovered, particularly from the children’s surveys, and incorporated into the redesign of a new pediatric dental drill. This study demonstrated a new approach to researching children’s emotional response to medical equipment and redesigning such equipment to reduce emotional anxiety.