Hospital play

Hi Everyone

I am a hospital play specialist and am based on a children's ward in a hospital, although as part of my role I do visit many different parts of the hospital to assist children with examinations, procedures and treatment. I also sometimes visit children in their own homes which is also part of my job as a play specialist.

hattyhar

[Ruthierhyme]

A huge warm welcome to Silkysteps

It is soooo hard to get information on your sector, I have a list of questions almost as long as Santa's wish list on my pc lol

But .. please, enjoy the site & everything we have here ..

Just one though .. do your PALS officers know about the work you do ?

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New hospital themed book list is available here and resources for distraction therapy here.

Hi

Thank you for your warm welcome, it seems to be a great site I'm sure I will enjoy using it.

Please do ask as many of your long list of questions, as you would like to, it really does make it much easier for play specialists to help if parents and other professionals involved with children knew how best to use us, so I really do want to answer all of your questions.

I don't know if our PALS officers (I guess you mean the Patient Advice Liaison Service) do know what I do. We have one based on my ward, the children's ward and she should know what I do. Fairly recently I got a new job to lead and develop the play service at a hospitalk that has not had play specialists before, so I have been pretty busy trying to educate everyone a my hospital about my role. I hope I have made quite a bit of progress with that area of my role, but who knows if people take it on board??

I have put a couple of websites that relate to Hospital Play on the site which I hope will be useful to people, but please do ask me any questions you like.

hattyhar

[Ruthierhyme]

Yes sorry .. it was the Patient Advice Liaison Services I meant .. I contacted many across the country in the hope of finding any internal or web based support networks to see what similarities & differences there are in our Childcare roles, there wasn't much information that anyone could forward to me.

Networks.nhs are an excellence source of information .. but again a blank lol ..

The questions really revolve around the logistics of a hospital based role .. do you plan or have a flexible approach to any activities offered... and what sort of things you do (or are allowed - messy wise/space restrictions ) to do !!?

With the temporary nature of contact with the children do you personally keep records / evaluations on the activities you do and are these reflected on/incorporated into any of the Children's care records or possibly kept as separate points of reference?

Being able to talk through what I would imagine could be quite traumatic events for both Adults & Children must be very rewarding and I'm sure at times challenging, who at the end of the day is your support ?

You mention your new role (.. Congratulations ) developing the Play Service .. what does that involve ?

If any of these questions encroach on anything confidential please accept my apologies... no answers are necessary

I've also moved this to it's own thread so that others can join in.

[Air]

Welcome
What a rewarding role you must have...what training have you done to support you within your work?
Find it very interesting...

Thank you for your questions. I will do my best
to answer them all.

Air, To practice as a hospital play specialist you need to study the Edexcel Level 4 Professional Development Diploma in Specialised Play for Sick Children & Young People. It is a one year part time course.

There are very few colleges around the UK that offer the course and each college only has a limited number of places. You need to hold a minimum of a level 3 child related qualification and have at least 3 years experience of working with children and have experience across the age range 0-18 years, as well as some experience with children with special needs. It is helpful to have spent some time shadowing a qualified hospital play specialist.

And yes I love my job, it is very rewarding and every day is always different.

Ruthierhyme, This is a slightly more complex question to answer. The focus of any of my activities is not to provide education in the way that you would in a nursery, school or any other simular setting. My focus is on having fun and promoting relaxation and promoting a non stressful environment. As children & young people use up much energy worrying which can then reduce their bodies ability to heal. Also children feel more pain when they are tense and since many procedures that place when a child is awake such as blood tests, dressing changes, injections, it is important to to help keep children calm.

There is a range of activities available for children to access all the time in the playroom on the ward, such as small world toys, dressing up, a home corner, a wide range of book, lots of table top and construction toys, train set, materials to draw and colour and many others. This play is supervised by parents or health care assistants on the ward. I will also often set out some basic craft activity on a table such as sticking. We also have tv's, DVD's, videos and playstations, which can be good for those children who are not well enough to actively play.

When I arrive on the ward each day I receive a detailed handover of all the children's needs on the ward, I will then prioritise which children need a play session the most. There is only one of me and a whole ward of children, so I tend to do either half hour or an hour play sessions with those children who need it and plan these around any other treatment a child may have.

I do design individual play programmes for children who will be an in-patient for more than one week or for those children who have a condition that means they will have regular short stays in hospital. The play programmes are really designed for children's psychosocial needs and medical needs and I plan play activities to assist with these outcomes. These play programmes are kept in each child's medical records, so they are on the ward with the child everytime they are in for any form of treatment.

The nurses for each ward tend to only work on that ward so we have a very close working team. I gain support from the nurses and health care asistants who work on my ward, as well as my ward sister. Most hospitals have a free counselling service for staff if needed, but I prefer to share with my colleagues on the ward.

My new role includes providing teaching sessions on my play specialist role to other depts and teams of professionals around my NHS Trust. Developing all my own forms for play programmes and other documentation. Writing policies on hospital play, toy hygiene, everything really that is linked with Hospital play and it's implimentation.

Hope I answered your questions fully enough, please do say if I didn't quite give you the information you were after.

Thank you both so much for being interested.

hattyhar

[Ruthierhyme]

wow .. fantastic thankyou !!

It is a very interesting role .. the stress relieving element is one that looks very worthy. In preschool we would look to the book corner, one to one, malleable/tactile and sensory activities to calm and relax .. I can imagine you having an array of solutions for differing situations.

If allowed, I'd love to see examples of your forms .. in essence I wonder how similar they would be to the sort of documents we use for play plans, individual and group play.

Sounds like your policy & procedure folder may expand quite quickly lol

Training sessions must be a great way to promote & recruit for the role.. is mentoring something you can see developing across the board as well ?

If you can think of anyway we can help in promoting what you do.. apart from getting the banners out & lobbying course providers just let us know.

Thanks again for sharing

Ruth
xx

Hi Ruth

I'm really so glad you are interested in the area of hospital play and that you found all my answers interesting. I would be happy to email you a copy of my form for individual play programmes, but every play specialist in different hospitals may design them slightly differently depending on the sort of conditions their ward treats and how long their children are likely to stay as an in-patient.

What would be really useful is to encourage childares and playworkers to enpower their settings parents with much more information about the play specialist role so that parents can better access play services for their children when either visiting or staying in hospital. Maybe with a leaflet that could be given to parents or a parents board on the subject.

It would also be really useful if childcarers and playworkers worked in partnership with play specialists a bit more. Playworkers and childcarers are the people who see children on a regular basis, know the child and get to talk to on a one to one. If a child seems worried about a issue relating to attending or going in to hospital, maybe they could (with the parents permission of course) share this with the play specialist at that paticular hospital. This way the play specialist can then make up an individual play programme for that child's play needs and psychosocial needs and put aside more time to work with that child.

Just a thought but I recently have written a case study about role as a play specialist for the Skils Active Careers website which would give a much more detailed view of what I do. Also people can visit the following websites for more information:

National Association of Hospital Play Staff www.nahps.org.uk
Hospital Play Staff Education Trust www.hpset.org.uk

But please do ask as many more questions as you like

hattyhar

[Ruthierhyme]

I am sorry for the bombardment of questions

A Hospital Playworker - Specialist article was published on here some time ago to help cross the barriers and provide a few ideas so that Early Years Practitioners can take your work into their nurseries & pre schools.

Hospital Playworkers and Specialists

Using a role play scenario it can be used to introduce children to the concept that a figure as familiar as their keyworker (individually assigned member of staff ) will be at the Hospital waiting for them/ Children who have an appointment or unexpected visit.

Please feel free to add or correct any of the suggestions on that thread lol

Your article sounds great .. you are more than welcome to place a link to it on Silkysteps, or if you like, to publish it here as an informative thread ..

As you say, the importance is to bring an awareness of how everyone can access the Play work services .. and indeed how to let all NHS hospitals know just how important the Play worker system is to the whole health ethos .. do you know of a network coordinator or contact pathway for getting in touch with individuals in this line of work ?

Please feel free to email me about anything silky@silkysteps.com

Hi Ruth

It was really interesting to read your article on hospital play workers and specialists. However I don't mean to be a bit negitive but on the whole I don't totally agree with this topic, being taught to children in nursery and pre-school settings.

This is due to that fact that over the years I have been a play specialist, I have met many children who have miss learnt details through role play and in imaginative play, that has later on lead to a child wanting to refuse treatment. One child I have worked with had learnt from another child, that in order to take his tonsilis out they needed to take his head off. This child had a panic attack a nearly could not go ahead with operation. Another child I worked with had miss understood in a school classroom discussion, because his understanding of death was that you have a very deep sleep in hospital and don't wake up again, therefore he thought he was going to die when he had anaesthetic, and was then going to be brought back to life again by the doctors. And this child asked what if this does not work, what will hapen then?

My personal feeling is that it is not possible for every childcarer or playworker to know everything a child has learnt or been taught (whether it is the right or wrong information) by family members or friends and does not normally have time to really check in detail what a child has taken from any learning situation. I know this is the same with any learning, but this topic is much more serious, as if a child had a life threating condition but refused treatment it could bring in some very serious results.:weepy:

Also it is also important to stress that since health care is developing and changing with new treatments and technologies, and there are a range of different ways a hospital may deal with an individual medical situation, it is not likely that the information in story books designed for children have the correct information. Very rarely do hospital play specialists use published books, as they find the information contained within them is not correct, normally we make our own books. Also, although I would always enourage parents to ask for their child to see the play specialist, many hospital still don't always employ any play workers or play specialists, so children maybe disapointed, if they were told that they would see a play worker. If a parents asks for their child to see a play specialist and there is not one, maybe the hospital will rethink but at least the child will not feel like they were given the incorrect information.

I really am so sorry to be so negative, but I, and so many play specialists I know, have had serious difficulties with information being given to children. I feel really really mean because I have had such lovely replies from everyone on this site and my reply in not positive, but I have to say how I feel, for the best interests of the children.

Sorry:sorry:

hattyhar:blush: