What is a consideration for children who must be hospitalized and how do pediatric hospitals and health psychologists address it? Discuss some research findings about various interventions and their relative effectiveness.

A. Being hospitalized can cause anxiety, stress, and distress for children.
1. They are separated from parents, in an unfamiliar environment; and undergo diagnostic testing, sedation, injections, surgery, and post-operative pain.
2. Pediatric hospitals frequently provide children with programs to prepare for hospitalization.
3. Health psychologists find special challenges in training children to cope with fear of hospitalization and treatment. They find it can be effective for reducing anxiety to supply information about hospital equipment and procedures to children and their parents.
B. Research finds reassuring children does not decrease their anxiety, but increases it.
1. This includes reassurance by parents who were given training in how to reassure their children.
2. Parents who had training in reassurance reported high confidence levels that they could reduce their children's anxiety, but this was not borne out in practice.
3. Parents not only had difficulty helping children via reassurance; they also experienced more distress themselves than other parents did, exacerbating their children's stress.
C. Research also finds that distracting children is much more effective than reassurance.
D. Modeling is an additional strategy to help reduce children's distress.
1. Modeling involves showing a child an example of another child successfully coping with a similar stressful procedure or situation.
2. Researchers found that combining modeling with cognitive-behavioral therapy, including teaching children positive self-talk, was more effective than administering Valium and other drug treatment.
E. Research indicates that interventions with multiple components are more effective with children than interventions with a single component.
F. Researchers find it important in preparing for children's hospitalization both to furnish information, and to teach coping skills, to both children and parents.
G. The primary difficulty with intervention strategies for minimizing children's distress at hospitalization is not their effectiveness, but their cost. However, if interventions decrease need for further care and/or other expenses, they may be cost-effective.