Kontakt 2010, 12(2):144-150 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2010.019

Role of nurses in providing play activities of hospitalized childrenNursing

Alena Machová^*, Iva Brabcová

Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Zdravotně sociální fakulta, katedra ošetřovatelství

In the life of a child and his/her family, disease brings a stress situation, particularly if hospitalization of the child is necessary. The child realizes the disease depending on his/her age and different children perceive their diseases in different ways. The restriction to movements and separation of children from friends and parents can result in anxiety.
Play is a children activity, which offers children with pleasure and is very important for their social, intellectual and emotional development. During the play, the child is familiarized with unknown words and with all the causes of anxiety. By the controlled play, the nurses acquaint children with their own diseases and explain them what can happen in the hospital. The free play helps the children to become free of problems and to gain self-confidence. The hospital is more friendly in the presence of playrooms, toys and children. It is of a great importance that the nurse should include plays ad play elements into all the nursing activities since ill children usually do not play spontaneously. Thus, the nurses must actively offer the plays.
Plays fall into nursing activities, which form an integral part of the nursing process. The nursing process is a systematic approach to the nursing care consisting of the following five parts: anamnesis, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation (Tóthová, 2009).
The target of the contribution presented here is mapping the provisions focused on free time of children from different age categories and role of particular healthcare professionals and other staff members in its organization. The study was processed based on a secondary analysis of the nursing and pedagogic literature and practical experience of the authors resulting from the work with hospitalized children.
The authors defined roles of healthcare professionals and other staff members in the organization of free time of hospitalized children. The authors proposed types of plays depending on particular age groups and pointed out a wide scale of plays for hospitalized children.
There is an important role of the nurse providing the operation of the playroom and choice of suitable toys. She is particularly supposed to secure the safety in all the play activities.

Keywords: child; play; hospitalization; nurse

Received: January 26, 2010; Accepted: May 3, 2010; Prepublished online: June 14, 2010; Published: June 14, 2012  Show citation