Play Interventions for Hospitalized Children With Disability

Abstract

Hospitalization is an unpleasant experience, and children with disabilities feel even more unsafe and confused, aggravating their level of anxiety and frustration, manifesting in negative behaviors. The most urgent need for a child with disability in the clinical setting and for the medical staff is to find a common ground that could facilitate communicational process, the comprehensiveness of care, the expression of what and how the child feels to be able to identify ways to describe their pain level and the sensations, to accept the treatment, and to explain the disease and the condition from which the child suffers. It is within a well-structured therapeutic play intervention that children with disabilities are more likely to reduce the anxiety that arises from threatening experiences. The lack of play can delay recovery, aggravate the symptoms, also can result in emotional withdrawal, diverse negative and regressive behaviors, tantrum episodes, and disrupted sleep patterns.