Storytelling as a Way to Design and Innovate Healthcare Services for Children

First starting in 2019, large construction projects are underway at Lapland Central Hospital, the northernmost hospital offering both primary healthcare and specialist care in Finnish Lapland. As a service provider, the hospital also covers healthcare services for children. One ongoing integration is focusing on children’s hospital services by providing psychiatry as an integral part of somatic care. The children’s hospital offers opportunities for innovative and creative approaches to explore storytelling as a way to innovate healthcare services with children. This study explores fiction-based research practices and how they can be adapted as a visual service journey mapping tool, which is a commonly used method in service design. This chapter discusses how children can be involved in planning hospital services through creative storytelling, how service design can be used to produce imaginative materials and analysing the data produced during creative design processes. As an outcome, a fiction-based storytelling method and visual service journey mapping tool will be presented as the result of using the materials of the children’s service design process in hospital settings in Finland.