Psychological support

The main problem the child meets on arriving for treatment in a medical institution, is the process of adaptation to the new conditions. For the solution of this question in our establishment, the system of psychological-pedagogical focus for children was created under the direction of a teacher-psychologist. All staff and, primarily teachers took part in its implementation.

Psychological-pedagogical focus on children’s development:

- specificity of medical institution for children (isolation from  family, necessary combination of medical and educational processes, regimen of hospital stay, conditions of new temporal children's team and so on);

- necessity of forming competent relational attitude to disease that depends on many factors: (severity of disease, limitation of movements, progress of medical treatment, age, temperament, maturity or immaturity of self-consciousness, motivational sphere, sex, psychosocial development, atmosphere in family, paternal perception of disease).

Efforts of the teacher-psychologist and all staff in our establishment are directed to the arrangement of conditions which would help child to cope with problems that have arisen, to reduce anxiety, to set positive emotionality.

Purpose: to solve problems in a child’s adaptation in the medical institution as soon as possible; to render psychological support in a timely manner.

Implementation phase of psychological-pedagogical focus:

I stage (pre-hospital):

- personal communication with children (the teacher-psychologist assist in work of the screening committee);

- obtaining information analysis;

-  preliminary children’s detection of «risk group»;

II stage (hospital):

1) initial hospital stage (1-7 days):

- primary express assessment of a child’s psycho-emotional status, arousal level to medical treatment (questioning of all children is carried out on arrived for treatment);

- personal diagnostics (psychological status, behavior, mental condition, motivation of progress and fear of failure and so-on), undertaken by educators by classical methods;

- «round-table» for teachers with the view to a recommendation of processes in working with children of «risk group»;

2) average hospital period (on the average from 8 to 40 days):

- personal correctional development work with children, carried out by a teacher-psychologist, and according to his recommendations by medical and pedagogical staff;

- group correctional development work with children, undertaken by educators according to the following developed programs:

«Preparation of preschool children for education at school»

«Adaptive games with school students» - 1-2 classes

«Development of logical thinking» - 3-4 classes

«Game-training of adaptability» - 3-4 classes

«Communication psychology» - 5, 6-7 classes

«Mental health of teenager»-8 class

«Preparation of teenager for future family life» - the 9th class

«Lessons of profession choice»-10-11 classes;

- consultation of parents;

3) the final period (one week before leaving a hospital):

- repeated express assessment of children’s psycho-emotional status of «risk group» for the purpose of progress evaluation.

 This system, primarily makes it possible to identify «risk groups» at a pre-hospital stage beforehand, secondly, each child arriving with us for medical treatment, in case of need, gets psychological support on time.

This implementation system of the working practices of our establishment shows high performance. An indicator of this, is that cases of premature discharge in connection with difficulty of adaptation to conditions of stationary medical institution in our Center are limited to one.