Clinical vs social approaches to pediatric patient care: the benefits and resistance of therapeutic recreation

Abstract

This presentation outlines the work I did as a Service Aid at the Montreal Children’s Hospital (MCH) from January 2022 to May 2022. I discuss the benefits and setbacks of the work I did with adolescent patients in the MCH psychiatry ward as the “art and play lady”. I also discuss the staff resistance I experienced in this role of offering therapeutic recreation with an embedded social (as opposed to more traditionally clinical) approach. As a teacher with an MA in art education, I also talk about how I was not treated as a professional by a number of the staff who told me I was “just a teacher”. This is not formal research but is instead an anecdotal and narrative account of my experiences in a role with a less traditional, socially based, patient-centered approach to patient care. The presentation also offers interesting examples of patient artwork that resulted from this experience. Overall, my story points toward the need for greater shifts in the hospital culture to occur to make it more feasible for therapeutic recreation to be available to patients. My story also suggests that more funding and education are needed to make social approaches to patient care more accepted by hospital systems.