When communicating with children in healthcare settings, how might play benefit the therapeutic relationship between the nurse and the child?

Besides satisfying a child’s normal need to play, play in hospital helps children to adjust to potentially stressful situations.

Play benefits children and young people by:

• Helping them to cope with illness;
• Helping them to cope with painful procedures;
• Reducing stress and anxiety;
• Providing an outlet for feelings of fear and frustration;
• Helping children regain confidence, independence and self-esteem;
• Aiding with diagnosis;
• Speeding up recovery and rehabilitation;
• Encouraging parents to be involved on their child’s care;
• Developing new skills for children;
• Helping them to achieve mastery;
• Helping them experience and identify emotions;
• Allowing children to practice roles; provides a way of acting out troublesome issues; and
• Finally, play is fun.

What non-conventional communication approaches might be used in other fields of practice?

Examples you may have thought of are:

• Sign-language for people who are profoundly deaf or mute
• Use of Makaton for people with a learning disability
• Use of picture cards for people who are unable to talk (e.g. after a stroke) or for whom English is not their first language
• Communication Boards, communication books and E-Tran frames
• Voice Output Communication Aids or VOCAs which may offer a single message up to multiple messages. They may involve a single button press to speak a whole message or require multiple button presses to build up a sentence.