Anxiety in the hospitalization of the paediatric patient

Abstract

The hospital admission of the paediatric patient entails an alteration in the child’s daily life and is therefore a highly stressful experience both for the child and for their family. High levels of anxiety directly influence their recovery, increasing the length of hospitalization, medication consumption and the frequency of complications. It is essential that both the healthcare team that attends the child and their family, and the organization of the hospital, invest efforts in creating strategies that foster a more humanized hospital context, modifying those environmental and organizational conditions that are necessary to facilitate the adaptation of the patient and their family in the hospital, with the aim of avoiding the negative psychological reactions that appear during admission.