A stay at the hospital is never ideal, but it can be especially frightening for children. If it was up to you, you would surely trade places with your child rather than subjecting them to a stay at a strange place with unfamiliar faces, but unfortunately, there are times when a night spent in the hospital is necessary and unavoidable.
The next best thing to trading places with your child is to do everything you can to prepare them for their hospital stay. There are a few things you can do to prepare them and put them at ease:
Explain All of the Various Roles to Them
It seems that more than ever before, there are an awful lot of people involved in a hospital experience. Your child will interact with many more people than just a doctor and a nurse when they spend time at the hospital.
There may be individuals present from organizations like provider’s choice scribe services that record interactions between your child and the doctor, teams with multiple nurses, imagery experts, and students in the case of a teaching hospital. There are a number of different medical professionals involved in your child’s hospital stay.
Interacting with all of these different people can be intimidating if your child isn’t prepared for it. Therefore, discussing all of the roles involved in your child’s care is an important element to preparing them for being at the hospital.
Pack Things to Entertain Your Child
Being at the hospital isn’t just scary, it can also be very boring and time can feel like it moves much more slowly. Giving your child entertainment that they typically enjoy at home can go a long way to making the experience more entertaining and make the environment feel more familiar.
The best sorts of entertainment are things that your child can completely immerse themselves in, like coloring books, handheld video games, laptop computer games, and small craft projects. Make sure that whatever you include doesn’t have too many small pieces that can end up creating a mess for nurses to clean up. It may also be best to avoid very expensive gadgets that could be stolen.
Talk About Times You’ve Gone to the Hospital
It may be a natural instinct for you to avoid thinking about the hospital or talking about it with your child, but explaining your experiences at the hospital could help your child understand that this is an experience all people go through and not something that they need to be very afraid of. Naturally, it’s best to leave out any particularly frightening details or bad experiences.
Make the Most of Your Child’s Hospital Stay
Although you surely wish that your child could stay healthy forever, the fact is that they will need to go to the hospital at some point in their lives. Properly preparing your child for the hospital can make the experience much more manageable.