Play Therapy as an Intervention in Hospitalized Children: A Systematic Review Godino Iáñez, María José Martos Cabrera, María Begoña Suleiman Martos, Nora Gómez Urquiza, Jose Luis Vargas Román, Keyla Membrive Jiménez, María José Albendín García, Luis Game Hospitalization Nursing Pediatrics Therapeutic play Background: Hospitalization disrupts children’s lives and can produce feelings such as anxiety, fear, or pain. Playing is an important part of children’s lives. Thus, it is necessary to ensure holistic care during the process, including play therapy. The aim of this study was to analyze the e ect of therapeutic play in hospitalized children. Methods: Asystematic review was performed. The search was conducted in CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature), CUIDEN, and PubMed (Medline). The search equation was “pediatric nurs* AND play therapy”. The search was performed in March 2020. Results: n = 14 studies were included in the review. The studies reveal that the application of therapeutic play in hospitalized children decreases postoperative pain, improves behavior and attitude, and reduces anxiety during the hospital stay. Conclusions: play therapy has a beneficial impact on the care of hospitalized children and should be implemented in pediatric units after assessing the resources and training needed for pediatric nurses 2020-12-14T10:46:10Z 2020-12-14T10:46:10Z 2020-07-29 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Godino-Iáñez, M. J., Martos-Cabrera, M. B., Suleiman-Martos, N., Gómez-Urquiza, J. L., Vargas-Román, K., Membrive-Jiménez, M. J., & Albendín-García, L. (2020, September). Play Therapy as an Intervention in Hospitalized Children: A Systematic Review. In Healthcare (Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 239). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. [10.3390/healthcare8030239] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/64877 10.3390/healthcare8030239 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Mdpi