My Journey to Hospital Land
Contents
Overview
My Journey to Hospital Land is a trauma informed preventative care program that has been designed to empower children and their families in their journey through hospital. The program includes three components; a storybook for children, a guide for parents and an interactive website.
'Going to hospital can be strange and a bit scary. Everything is so different! The doctors with their stethoscopes, the machines that beep, the other children in bandages, the noises and lights when you're trying to sleep, the food, the people you meet, even the strange medical language the doctors and nurses speak.​
It’s all so different it’s like being in a different land - Hospital Land!'
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A therapeutic storybook that empowers children with psychological strategies and pain management skills, as well as ideas about sharing a room with someone very different.
A guide for parents that provides easy and useful ideas to support children through the hospitalisation experience.
The website allows children to make their own Hospital Land Passport where they write their own story and collect ideas for how to manage best during their hospital stay.
About
What's 'My Journey To Hospital Land' all about?
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MY JOURNEY TO HOSPITAL LAND has been designed to enhance the well-being of young patients by reducing anxiety, minimising the potential trauma of hospitalisation, and helping children adjust effectively to the multicultural hospital environment. Research shows that up to 80% of pediatric patients and their families experience traumatic stress following illness, injury, hospitalisation, or painful medical procedures. This innovative program has been designed to be used as a resource by the Department of Health (federal and state) and public hospitals to address the needs of children and their families in a patient-centred proactive manner and thus contribute to the delivery of a world class health system.
When people travel to a foreign land they often take a travel guide to help them find their way. It tells you what to expect and how to behave. So ‘Harry's Journey to Hospital Land’ and the ‘Parents’ Guide to Hospital Land’ are both such travel guides - helping children and adults find their way in hospital.
The idea of a ‘Journey To Hospital Land’ helps change the focus of the hospital experience away from being scary and unpleasant to a sort of adventure. It shifts the focus for children and parents from a sense of helplessness to empowerment, from being passive to being active, from negatives to positives.
All travellers set out on their journey not knowing exactly where it will lead them. Sometimes it’s only when we journey away from the things we know that we learn new things about the world, and ourselves.
The two ‘Travel guides,” together with the Hospital Land Website, hope to help children and parents manage as best as possible with their stay in hospital, and even discover some new things about themselves and others along the way. ​
‘Harry's Journey to Hospital Land’ follows the experiences of a young boy through his hospital stay; from admission through treatments to discharge. As they read the story, children will know what to expect and how to prepare themselves, and so the hospital experience is likely to be less anxiety provoking and traumatic.
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The character in the story, a young boy who is uncertain and anxious as he is sent to hospital, is someone children can identify with. Like him they may miss their bedroom at home, their family and pets, and like him they may also be surprised to discover the different people they will meet in hospital.
MY JOURNEY TO HOSPITAL LAND helps children understand what will happen to them during hospitalisation - research shows that when provided with this information, children feel more reassured, respected and prepared and as a result are less anxious (Clinical Paediatrics 2016, vol 55).
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By familiarizing the child with the routines and procedures in hospital these become more predictable and the child gains a sense of control. Furthermore the story provides specific tools (including cognitive psychological skills for children, relaxation breathing techniques) which help children cope with common procedures such as blood tests, drips etc which are often anxiety provoking. ​
Harry’s Journey to Hospital Land also includes a dictionary of medical words for children, a map of places in the hospital to help children find their way around and some funny jokes about doctors and hospitals (because we all know that laughing together, even when things feel strange, helps us feel better!)
Story therapy
Harry's Journey to Hospital Land is a therapeutic storybook written especially for children. Here's an excerpt:
Parent's guide
The program includes a guide for parents that provides easy and useful ideas to support children through the hospitalisation experience.
When a child is hospitalised it’s often challenging both for the child and the parents. Going to hospital involves things many children worry about in the course of their everyday lives: being separated from family and friends, feeling sick and getting hurt, the unknown, doctors and medical procedures, dark rooms, strange machines and equipment, seeing other sick children and maybe more.
The Parents’ Guide provides reassuring ideas for how parents can best help their child through the hospitalisation experience. As parental stress is transmitted to children and high anxiety in parents is associated with high anxiety in children, the guide supports the well being of both the child and the parent.​ Here's an excerpt.
Interactive website
The Hospital Land website is a place where children have shared their experiences and ideas for coping. Reading other children’s stories will normalise your child’s experience, helping reduce the “why am I so different?” and “what’s wrong with me?” feeling that children (and adults) have when their life experience is different to their peers. There are stories of how and why other children went to hospital, ideas for how to fall asleep in hospital and stories of what it’s like sharing a room with someone different to you.
Through the website children can make their own Hospital Land Passport where they write their own story and collect ideas for how to manage best in hospital.
Reviews
What the medical professors & psychologists say
Esther Takac brings her experience as a psychologist to understand the feelings of children who come into hospital. She provides a perceptive, balanced and easy to read insight, for both children and parents, into the fears and anxieties of the hospital experience.
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The therapeutic story “Harry's Journey to Hospital Land” follows the experiences of a young boy through his hospital stay - from admission through treatments to discharge. As they read the story, paediatric patients will know what to expect and how to prepare themselves, and so the hospital experience is likely to be less anxiety provoking and traumatic.
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Using the metaphor of “Hospital Land” the story reframes the hospitalization experience as a journey to a different land. Indeed going to hospital is in many ways like travelling to a foreign country; many things are different and unfamiliar - the daily routine, the hospital procedures, the doctors and nurses who speak a medical language you may not understand, even the food and the weather!
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The story is designed to empower paediatric patients, offering coping strategies and enabling children to perceive themselves as having the skills to manage difficult situations. The character in the story, a young boy who is uncertain and anxious as he is sent to hospital, is someone children can identify with. Like him they may miss their bedroom at home, their family and pets, and like him they may also be surprised to discover the different people they will meet in hospital. By familiarising the child with the routines and procedures in hospital these become more predictable and the child gains a sense of control.
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The Parents’ Guide provides reassuring ideas for how parents can best help their child through the hospitalisation experience and the Hospital Land website with it digital passport adds an extra fun and therapeutic resource.
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This is a program that deserves a wide audience as the issues are universal and Esther approaches them with sensitivity and openness. Highly recommended.
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Dr. Lionel Lubitz
Consultant Paediatrician (retired), Dept of General Medicine,
Royal Children’s Hospital
Associate Professor (Clinical),Dept of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne
"My Journey to Hospital Land" is a compassionate and insightful guide for children and their parents navigating the challenging journey of hospital visits. Written by experienced psychologist Esther Takac, it offers a gentle and reassuring resource to families during a vulnerable time. Through engaging stories, practical advice, and heartfelt illustrations, "My Journey to Hospital Land" demystifies the hospital experience, providing comfort and understanding to young patients and their loved ones.
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Tegan Carrison
Executive Director of the Australian Association of Psychologists​
"My Journey to Hospital Land" is a therapeutic program to support and empower children and their families during the hospital stay of the child. The storybook for children introduces pediatric patients to the hospital environment. They are shown throughout the story what to expect and how to get ready for their hospital stay, this will lower their anxiety and render the experience less traumatic.
The story provides specific tools (including cognitive psychological skills for children, relaxation breathing techniques etc.) which help children cope with common procedures such as blood tests, drips etc. which are often anxiety provoking. “Hospital Land” invokes in the child the feeling that the hospitalization experience is a journey to a different land, and helps change the focus of the hospital experience from being scary and unpleasant to a positive adventure. The focus for children and parents is shifted from a sense of helplessness to empowerment, from being passive to being active, from negative to positive. ​
The "Parents’ Guide" provides practical, and helpful ideas for parents on how to best support their child during the hospitalisation experience. Parental stress is often transmitted to children and high anxiety in parents is associated with high anxiety in children, therefore the guide for parents supports the well-being of both the child and the parent.
The "Hospital Land Website" offers a place for children to share their experiences and ideas for coping. It provides a safe online community that can help children support each other. It allows children to connect with others who are hospitalized as well, and therefore will understand what they are going through.
​Professor Eitan Kerem
Consultant Paediatrician
Chairman, Department of Pediatrics
Hadassah Medical Organisation, Jerusalem
