[Regan Saunders]

#92468

I have had the privilege of working at a few hospitals around the country, and experiencing different paediatric departments in the government centre. As a general rule, the hospitals are largely not kitted out for play therapy for children, and health care providers often seem to be too busy for play therapy.

However, i have also experienced a few scenarios where healthcare workers use what is available to create play therapy. Here are a few examples that I have seen:

1) At Rahima Moosa Hospital, a kickboxing instructor was asked to give play sessions with the children in the oncology ward. This instructor is involved with many different palliative care teams and she said that the children love her sessions. It gives them something fun to do but also gives them the feeling of strength and confidence to help fight whatever illness they are suffering from.
2) At Northdale hospital there is a children’s playground attached to the ward, and the children were allowed to play on the playground if they had a supervisor. There was a little girl who was suffering from uncontrolled epilepsy and was at the hospital almost every week. When I initially saw her, she was miserable, and wouldn’t talk to the doctors or the nurses. Then one day we took her outside with some of the other children from the ward to play, and she became a brand new child – she even smiled. It made her feel like a child again, not just a patient or a pathology.
3) My last story is from Greytown Hospital, which is a tiny district hospital. We had twins that were abandoned and were severely stunted and neurodevelopmentally delayed. My college and I decided that, since they would be with us for a while awaiting placement, we would take matters into our own hands. We would set out a mattress for them on the floor and we found some ag-appropriate toys hidden in the ward and washed them for the children. Then when we had all our paperwork that needed to be done in the ward, we would put the twins on our make-shift play mat and sit with them while we filled out all our paperwork. It was astounding to see the development of those two children in just one month of play-therapy.

Play therapy is so vital in a child, no matter what illness they have, but particularly in those who have chronic illnesses and spend a lot of time in hospital. It makes them feel like a child again and gives them the confidence they need to fight their disease.

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