Andalusian hospitals that care for minors with cancer they repeat each day a childhood cancer day to raise awareness regarding the disease from a care that focuses on humanization. This is the case of Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital in Granadawhose Pediatric service has a Oncohematology hospitalization unitin which health professionals treat and care for children who are diagnosed with different types of childhood tumors.
In this space, located on the top floor of the Maternal and Child Hospital, children from the province and neighboring areas they receive the most advanced treatments, but also a lot of affection, warmth and closenessand always with a commitment to normalcy to make the day to day as similar as possible to what they would have at home, with their families and with their friends.
This is handled by a team of oncologists, nurses, auxiliary nursing care technicians, caretakers and a teacher who teaches school classes in a classroom attached to the care unit, as detailed by the Board.
This work is enriched by the involvement of families, associations and different social groups that provide activities, toys and numerous details for these minors who usually have long stays in the hospital.
In Spain, 1,400 new cases of childhood cancer are diagnosed each year, of which the most frequent is leukemia, followed by those of the central nervous system and lymphomas. Raising awareness of these diseases is one more line of work marked in red for September, the ‘Childhood Cancer Awareness Month’.
It is a global initiative to give visibility to the disease and to bring the reality of these minors and their families closer to the whole of society, although this Granada hospital works every day on this awareness from the humanization of care.
The Nursing supervisor, Remedios Lázaro, recently distinguished with the “Optimistic Professional” award, has pointed out that the Pediatric service “has a highly advanced humanization plan which is summed up in bringing to the hospital what happens outside so that the minor can experience the hospital stay as normally as possible”.
“If it’s the party of the Corpus, the plant is decorated with fair motifsYes it is Christmas, gifts are givenand so with other dates such as the spring festival, the Cross or Halloween”, he exemplified.
Although the outbreak of Covid changed everything, it closed the doors of hospitals to volunteering, activities such as canine therapy returna humanization project in collaboration with the Spanish Association Against Cancer and the Hachiko training company, to work on the most emotional part and reduce the anxiety generated by hospital processes in the most vulnerable.
On the Oncopediatrics floor there is also time for whims and, like everyone else, these little patients delight in something as delicious as ice cream. The environment is warm, with a very careful decoration and a corridor long enough to reach speed with the tricycle adapted to carry the medication and a high-end automatic stroller.
The head of the Pediatric Nursing block, Aída Galindo, points out that, with this humanized care, it is intended that children in Pediatric Oncology also share activities with those on other Pediatric floors if the clinical situation allows it and they go out to the landing to enjoy magic or music shows.
In this normalization of assistance, not everything is going to be playing, you also have to go to schoolfor which they have an exclusive school classroom in which the “teacher” Antonio gives regulated classes so that the patient-student does not lose the rhythm of his education.
The Granada hospital has a pediatric home care unit for three years, which has allowed more than twenty minors with cancer receive chemotherapy at homeall in the line of humanizing care.