Play in Healthcare Week 2024 (14 - 18 October) is an annual awareness week which showcases the importance of providing the opportunity, space and time for play to children in hospitals. The awareness week is supported by the national charity Starlight, who support children to experience the power of play to boost their wellbeing and resilience during illness.
Izabela, Moira and Claire make up our Play team at ASPH and support our younger patients and their parents to create positive experiences in healthcare settings. The team support children and young people through therapeutic play to help prepare and distract them from their procedures and during appointments.
In September, the Play team:
- Worked with 358 inpatients and provided bedside play
- Prepared and distracted 188 patients having general anaesthetic for surgery / MRI
- Prepared and distracted 43 patients for blood tests, injections, infusions, scans
- Provided two therapeutic play sessions for patients and their families
All whilst creating lots of laughter, making plenty of hot drinks for parents, cleaning lots of toys, blowing millions of bubbles and walking miles each day along hospital corridors to accompany patients to theatres and diagnostic tests!
To celebrate the importance of play, we were pleased to welcome freelance entertainer, Megan who brought with her lots of joy and giggles. Thank you to Momentum Charity who enabled this visit.
We also welcomed back Daisy, our visiting Therapy dog (PAT) who comes to the children and young people wards once a week with her owner, Janet. Daisy is a much welcome distraction for patients and receives a lot of love and attention from staff and members of the public every time she comes to visit!
If you’d like to see our Play team in action, you can watch our video which shows how they support children coming in for surgery.
