JEDDAH – Illness knows no age, time, or season. Since the weather in Jeddah is spring-like with cool breezes and clear, sunny skies, most youngsters are outdoors enjoying their school holidays on trips to the beach, parks, and theme parks. Yet some young children are in hospital for scheduled surgery, a broken arm, flu that spiraled out of hand or other reasons that restricted their little bodies to a hospital bed. Volunteers from the youth club Athar Alshabab thought “why not take some holiday fun to the sick children in the hospital?” With the help of the hospital staff and the patient education center, the youth organized a show and party for the young in-patients at the International Medical Center (IMC). The festivities were held in an outdoor garden of the hospital and with the assistance of their parents and nurse all the children were able to enjoy the show and join in the fun, games, and contests. The volunteers also visited the children who were too sick to leave their hospital rooms to cheer them up and distribute toys and story books. The chairman of the department of pediatrics in the International Medical Center, Dr. Zuhdi Al-Imam, not only agreed to the event and allowed the volunteers to participate, but he enthusiastically welcomed the idea. “I believe that playing, laughter, smiling, and drawing play an important role in the healing and recovery process of sick children. “Keeping children happy and content makes them feel better about themselves and helps us as doctors to provide the best treatment because when a child is happy, he/she will be more accepting of the doctor, the hospital staff, and the treatments we must administer,” said Dr. Zuhdi Al-Imam. “When I visit my young patients in their hospital rooms in the pediatric ward and even when I work in my clinic in the outpatient department, I do not wear the white lab coat. “Children even as young as one year of age link the white lab coat with hospital equipment or a painful needle and they may become tense and uncomfortable simply from the sight of the white coat. “In this hospital, the child is encouraged to feel safe and comfortable in his in-patient room. “Vaccines or intravenous fluids are not given to the child in his room because we do not want him to draw a negative association between his hospital room and a painful experience. “The child's room is his place and he should feel safe there. We have a separate station where the child is taken for injections, drawing of a blood sample, or other uncomfortable procedures,” added Al-Imam. More and more healthcare providers in the Kingdom should adopt this approach of tending to the patient's emotions and communicating better, in addition to the medical treatment of the physical manifestations on the patient's illness. In the United Kingdom, the vital role of play and recreational activities is so well recognized that one of the larger hospitals there has employed a total of 40 play specialists in the pediatric wards and clinics. “Rather than being seen as a luxury, play is now an integral and important part of the treatment when a child comes to hospital. “Hospital can be frightening for anyone, let alone a young child. It is an unfamiliar environment where there are new faces and medical equipment to get used to. “At any moment someone might come along and do something that could hurt. Play resources offer a child normal, familiar, and safe activities in a strange world,” said Sue Ware, head of play services at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
