ABSTRACT
Children confronted with chronic illness, disabilities, and intense or repeated health care experiences face unique physical, emotional, and mental challenges (Bauman, Drotar, Leventhal, Perrin, & Pless, 1997; LeBlanc, Goldsmith, & Patel, 2003; Sheldon, 1997). From a social-emotional perspective, the process of becoming a hospital patient involves:
• Mortifying experiences involving loss of self-integrity and dignity; • Unpleasant and frightening procedures involving pain; • Traumatic separation from family, home, and community; • Loss of bodily comforts, disruption of routines, intrusive, scary noises, and sleep deprivation; • Exposure to an overwhelming array of strangers; • Introduction to a foreign and threatening environment; • Real or imagined fears about mutilation and death (Clark, 2003; Northam, 1997; Reed, Smith,
Fletcher & Bradding, 2003).
