![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Learning Objective 1: Gain insight about the usefulness of play therapy in educating pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic diseases like Asthma and Diabetes
Learning Objective 2: Realize the importance of hospital based play therapy projects to relief the anxiety and to promote the self-management skills among Asthmatic and Diabetic patients.
Play therapy is one of the strategies to address behavioural issues among sick and hospitalized children diagnosed with chronic diseases (Lieberman, 2001). As Diabetes and Asthma are few of those chronic diseases that pose several emotional consequences over young children, therefore, use of play therapy has been viewed as one of the educational strategies to promote self management skills, lower anxiety levels, and enhance coping among these children. In Pakistani Pediatric settings, where pediatric hospitalized patients are not commonly taught for their treatment regimen, the non-compliant behaviour and adjustment issues are commonly witnessed among Pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic diseases.
Purpose
Considering this gap, a pilot play therapy project was initiated at inpatient and outpatient pediatric setting of a private tertiary care hospital at Karachi, Pakistan. This project aimed at introducing play therapy as an educational strategy for Diabetic and Asthmatic children to aware them about their disease process, management plans, and life style modifications.
Methodology
Multidisciplinary team of pediatric health care professionals was involved in planning the play therapy kit, and implementation of the project. Altogether 40 pediatric health care professionals were trained through face to face workshop, and then they were evaluated and certified based on the observation of their play therapy sessions with Asthmatic and Diabetic children.
Findings
After play therapy sessions, it was noticed that Asthmatic (n=9) and newly diagnosed Diabetic children (n=2) who were previously fearful, anxious, and had no knowledge about their disease process, were able to verbalize about their disease and demonstrate the correct technique of inhaler and insulin administration on dolls and then on self.
Conclusion
This pilot project revealed that use of play therapy is one of the useful educational strategies to enhance knowledge and skills of Pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic diseases like Asthma and Diabetes.