Page 47 - IJSA, Vol. 4, No 1, 2021

P. 47

International Journal of Science Annals, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2021
рrint ISSN: 2617-2682; online ISSN: 2707-3637; DOI:10.26697/ijsa

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

The Play Specialist in the Pediatric Healthcare:

Evidence-Based Professionalism,
Issues in Practice, and Training
Across Different Countries

Perasso G. 1,2

1 University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
2 Il Porto dei Piccoli Onlus, Italy

Received: 25.03.2021; Accepted: 01.06.2021; Published: 30.06.2021

DOI and UDC DOI https://doi.org/10.26697/ijsa.2021.1.7 UDC 159.9:615.851.8
Conflict of interests: The author declares that there is no conflict of interests
Peer review: Double-blind review
Source of support: This study did not receive any outside funding or support
Information about Perasso Giulia – https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3265-3869;
the author: [email protected]; Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology,
Neuroscience, Data Science, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-
Bicocca, Milan, Italy; Research Consultant, Porto dei Piccoli Onlus, Genoa, Italy.

Dear Editor,
For developmental psychologists, playing is a crucial “recreational therapist”. Nowadays, there is a great
parameter to monitor children and adolescents’ physical, terminological fragmentation in describing all the
emotional, cognitive, and executive development and professionals trained to support children during
wellbeing. In the psychotherapy setting, play is a hospitalization through age-specific and diagnosis-
promotor of positive therapeutic change because it allows specific play programs. Different countries adopt
the child to express beliefs, memories, wishes, feelings, different labels to describe this role, which can be defined
and subconscious contents, from a safe and indirect point by the keyword “Play Specialist” (Porto dei Piccoli,
of view. Play is a fundamental human right during the 2021). Play Specialist intervention differs from Play
whole life cycle, and it becomes even more important for Therapy because Play Therapy is a projective technique
those children and adolescents who are hospitalized or practiced by psychotherapists in the light of a
experiencing medical treatments at home (European psychoanalytical framework. Play Specialist’s
Association for Children in Hospital, 1988). Entering a intervention, instead, can be summarized into two core-
medical setting can elicit children’s and adolescents’ actions (Burns-Nader & Hernandez-Reif, 2014):
distress on many levels (e.g., anxiety, depression, 1) medical play: using medical equipment and language
hypochondria, acting out, externalizing, and internalizing to help the child to get used and not fear the medical
problems) since their familiar routine is temporarily setting and procedures; 2) normative play: proposing
disrupted. play activities to the child that are similar to play
In the 1920s the nurses Florence Nightingale and activities he or she practices at home. This establishes a
Florence Erikson were the first to intuit the power of play sense of continuity with the life before illness, and/or
for hospitalized children: the pediatric patients who could offers distractions and imaginary escapes from reality.
experience play sessions with a properly trained Noticeably, the Play Specialist can also offer to children
professional were more adherent towards medical with chronic conditions (e.g., diabetes or disabilities)
treatments (Francischinelli et al., 2012). Play can make experiential activities outside of the children’s comfort-
the hospital experience enjoyable, or at least less zone, to increase their health-related responsibility and
terrifying for the youngsters. Back then, many synonyms self-efficacy.
were used to describe this role like “play-lady”, “puppet The aim of the study. To foster scientific community
lady”, “play checkers”, “playing teacher”, and consideration about the Play Specialist role, paying

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