You meet so many people when you’re in hospital with your child. Who are they all? And what do they all do? In this series, we explore the roles you might come across in hospital and meet the humans behind them!
Who are Play Specialists and what do we do?
Being a qualified play specialist or HPS for short and introducing ourselves and our title to parents, carers and young people, brings about many questions to people who don’t understand what our role is and why we do it.
My name is Zoe and I am the Senior Play Specialist at the RNOH in Stanmore. I have been qualified for 23 years and have worked my way up from being a basic play specialist straight after qualifying to a Senior 1 play specialist after four years of work.
As our title suggests we are known to play with children in hospitals and other health care settings e.g. specialist clinics, Hospices’s, Community Health settings and sometimes schools. However, we do more than “Just Playing”.
Over the years and still even now, when we welcome families onto the ward/hospital outpatients’ departments, parents/carers often say to us “oh that’s a lovely nice easy job just playing with children all day” or “my child is a teenager, she is too old to play” or my child is a teenager, she doesn’t need you.”
These comments and pre-conceived ideas about our role do frustrate me from time to time. It is only when I explain to them calmly in a friendly way what we actually do for children and young people in hospital, they think about what I have said and they seem to calm down and appreciate our efforts and role within the hospital.
So, what is our role?
Our role is very varied but first and foremost it is to provide a child-friendly environment wherever children are in hospital and support their understanding of what is going on around them and happening to them through play preparation. We also provide distraction and post-procedural play to help children with processing what they have experienced.
Play preparation at any age from 2-18 has major benefits for the child/young person and how we prepare children for their invasive procedures vary according to the age of the child and their abilities. For example, for young children aged 2-5, we often prepare using role play, story books and we use the child’s teddies/dolls to demonstrate what will happen.
When children are aged 6-10, we use methods such as showing them real hospital equipment e.g. the gas mask, cannulas, heart monitor stickers etc and encourage them to hold the equipment and play with it in order to reduce their fears of it.
For young people age 11-18, preparation is more like 6–10-year age group, actually showing them the equipment but often we go a little bit deeper emotionally, by encouraging talking about what their fears and anxieties are. We often find that teenagers will seem fine, they will nod and say everything is fine but when we ask them the question “Are you sure there is nothing you are scared about?” “How are you feeling about going to sleep with the cannula?” Teenagers particularly say “actually I am worried about this”. We then work through their fears offering techniques to help them cope. For example, breathing exercises, allowing them to distract themselves with their phones/IPAD’s, speaking to doctors to advocate for them by asking for pre-meds etc.
Also, we find that teenagers often open up to us more when their parents leave the room because they feel safe talking to us knowing we will sit and listen, and we provide them with coping strategies to help them navigate their hospital stay and beyond.
I recently had a very interesting preparation for an almost 17 year old yesterday who came to see me for an MRI scan and was very anxious. The mum phoned me and said she wasn’t sure about coming because when she told her son about coming to see the play specialist first he told her “no I don’t want to see a play specialist because I am nearly 17 and not a child anymore”. I explained to mum about my rle and how it will help him with his anxieties and she said that they would come.
The session went really well and I introduced myself as saying that I was here for his mental well being and to offer skills and tips to help him cope with being in a large machine and he gave me really lovely feedback afterwards. He said that he was surprised by how helpful I was even for someone of his age.
Play specialists provide play preparation for whatever the child is having done. This ranges from having a general anaesthetic, having a blood test, cannula insertion, catheter, MRI/CT scan, dressing changes. The list is not exhaustive and there are many more things we prepare for but I would be here a while talking about it.
A project I have been working on for ten years now is my MRI project where I have designed and developed a mini-MRI model which is fully interactive and has a moveable bed, lights and real MRI sounds to simulate what actually happens during a scan. This project is proving very successful because I am able to prepare children forty-five minutes before their scan and encourage them to give their scans a go without the need to go to sleep.
My success rate is nearly ninety percent and I am not only saving children from having unnecessary drugs and a prolonged stay in hospital, but I am also saving my trust thousands of pounds per year.
Throughout our training to become Play Specialists, although we are not fully qualified Counsellors/Psychologists, psychology and counselling is covered quite a bit in our course. Another big part of our role is helping children with their fears, anxieties and phobias, particularly needle phobia and general hospital phobias. We have had specific training in how to help children and young people overcome their fears/phobias and often we bring children in for play therapy sessions before they come for their actual procedures.
So this is just a taster of the types of things we do as Play Specialists to support our children and young people through their hospital experiences. Play is an important part of our lives and we provide and enable children and their siblings and visitors to take part in playing every day.
If you would like more information, Zoe is happy to be contacted by email: zoe.keates@nhs.net
Do you know the difference between a play therapist and play specialist? You’re not alone! They are different roles offering different benefits to children and families. You can find out more about the role of a play therapist here.
You can see more blogs from our Hospital Humans series on our website. We also have loads of information to guide you through a stay in hospital with your child, all created by parents who have been in hospital with their child. From admittance to discharge and everything in between, we’ve got you covered.
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