Medical play has often been used to help young children cope with their medical experiences and help teach them about different medical equipment that they may encounter. Over the years medical play has evolved and became something that can be done with older adolecent populations to educate patients and make them more comfortable with different types of equipment. One interesting type of education that has always been a staple in child life departments is bingo with the use of equipment instead of numbers to fill out the card but some studies have shown that for a patient to truly be comfrortable they need to have hands on expericne with it.
The use of medical equipment for creating art allows kids to use equipment that is normally used on them. Allow the children to manipulate g-tubes and IV's shows shows them that these supplies are simply pieces of plastic that are used to treat them and should not be objects of fear.
Another thing that children that frequent hospitals see far to often are syringes used to give them shots or administer bad tasting medicine. This leaves them with the idea that syringes are scary and cannot be fun. Syringe painting allows this scary equipment to be used for fun. In order to do this activity all you need is several syringes, paint in plastic cups, and a couple cups of water to rinse out syringes. paintings can be realistic, abstract or just splatters of paint all over the page. Something important to remember while doing this activity is to make sure that you are using a washable paint as you may make a mess. Also make sure that paint is spread evenly and not gobbed as this will speed up drying time.
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