Abstract:

The main source of life for children is the child’s work and the toy is an important tool. Therefore, play therapy, which has become one of the important parts of care in child health nursing practices, is the practices that can be used in all periods of the child's life and in all the problems he experiences. The game therapy, which supports the artistic side of nursing, is used as a non-invasive relaxation technique in nursing. The purpose of this systematic collection is to study the research done using play therapy in the field of child health care in Turkey. Method: In the identificative type of study; in Turkey, the use of play therapy in the field of child health was published in the years 2005-2019, the full text of nursing research was made a sample. The research was achieved between July-October 2019 in the data bases of Pubmed, Ulakbim, Turkish Medline, National Thesis Scanning Center in Turkish "Turkey, Nursing, Game Therapy, Child Health"; in English "Turkey, Nursing, Play Therapy, Child Health" with keywords. First of all, the conformity to the criteria of inclusion of the research examined by the data control form was assessed. Traditional compilations, validity-confidence research and articles that are unavailable to the full text have not been included in the study. Results: In Turkey between 2005-2019 years, 11 studies were achieved using game therapy by nurses (5 doctoral and 6 master thesis studies) and only a few were published as international research articles. 27.3 percent of the research was semi-experimental, 54.5 percent experimental, and 18.2 percent qualitic-nicelical (carma) type. 9% (81) of the studies were conducted in the hospital environment, 2% (19%) in the outside of the hospital environment. The result: Many studies have proven the effectiveness of game therapy in nursing practices and are an application with significant effects that can be used in any stage of care. The application of game therapy by nurses should be applied not only in the hospital environment, but also outside the hospital. Children in hospitals should have an environment where children can play, organized in a way that addresses every age group and supported with appropriate toys. The nurses should be given training in game therapy and emphasize the importance and benefits of game therapy. Although studies have been found that game therapy is used in children’s health care practices in our country, more evidence-based experimental studies are needed to develop children’s health care practices and scientific literature.

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