ABSTRACT

For children, hospitalization is an unpleasant experience, meaning the sudden departure from an environment they know and used to, such as their family, friends, home, and the interruption of their favorite activities, especially games, and their daily routines. During hospitalization, children often experience anxiety about loss of autonomy, deterioration of their safety and physical integrity, and fear of pain and medical procedures. The anxiety and fear experienced by children make it difficult to cope with illness and the problems caused by hospitalization, adversely affect their compliance with the disease and treatment, reduce the recovery rate of the child, prolong the hospitalization period, increase hospital costs by causing morbidity, mortality and disability. Play is a form of learning that facilitates the child's adaptation to the outside world, contributes to discovering the environment he / she is in, enables him / her to communicate, and gives the child new experiences, abilities and social roles. Play is an effective coping skill that allows children of all ages to manage their fears, anxieties and express them in a controlled manner. Pediatric nurses should resort to therapeutic game in order to minimize the negative feelings they feel in the care of the hospitalized child, to meet their psychosocial needs, to develop coping mechanisms and to adapt to the hospital environment. Therapeutic play is a phenomenon that helps strengthen the child-parent bond, develop relationships with healthcare professionals, and connect the child with life outside the hospital. In this review, it is aimed to explain the importance of therapeutic game in hospitalized children, its contributions to nursing care, and its place in the crisis of children who are quarantined in hospital due to COVID-19, which is the biggest threat to child health today.

Keywords: Hospitalized child, Therapeutic play, Pediatric nursing