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Abstract
Hospitalization can be a threatening and stressful experience for children. Because of unfamiliar with the environment and medical procedures and unaware of the reasons for hospitalization, it can result in children’s anger, uncertainty, anxiety and feelings of helplessness. Play is an integral part of the hospitalized child’s plan of care. Play offers, the child, an opportunity or creative expression, diversion and effective coping. The quantitative research approach, with quasi-experimental (non-equivalent control group, pretest-posttest design) was adopted for the study. 60 hospitalized children (30 in experimental and 30 in comparison group) were selected by purposive sampling. Sample characteristic performa was used to collect the demographic and clinical data. Structured anxiety rating scale was used to assess anxiety among hospitalized children by structured interview technique. Reliability of the structured anxiety rating scale was tested by using Cronbach’s alpha and found to be 0.85, i.e., reliable. Data collection was done in December 2017. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Results: The findings of this study revealed that in comparison of post-test mean score of anxiety in experimental and comparison group, the obtained t-value and p-value were 12.23 and 0.001 respectively, hence found to be significant (p<0.05) at 0.05 level. Further significant association was found between anxiety score and selected variables i.e., education of father (0.01), education of mother (0.01), occupation of father (0.03), family monthly income (0.04), place of residence (0.01) and type of family (0.01) and any medical personnel in family (0.04) in comparison group. It was concluded from the study that, play interventions is effective in reducing anxiety among hospitalized children.