Understanding the Perceptions, Behavior, and Attitudes of Healthcare Professionals, Hospitalized Children, and Parents of These Children Toward Hospital Play Services

i) Phase I study A retrospective cross-sectional questionnaire will be administered to the healthcare professionals who work in the abovementioned public hospitals. A convenience sample of 182 healthcare professionals will be recruited. In addition, the investigators will contact professional pediatric organizations, such as the Hong Kong Pediatric Society and Hong Kong College of Pediatric Nursing to help invite healthcare professionals to participate in this research.

A structured questionnaire has been developed based on existing international and/or local literature. The information gathered will include perceptions of and attitudes toward hospital play, the feasibility and usefulness of hospital play, understanding the roles and responsibilities of hospital play specialists , perceptions of collaborating with hospital play specialists , and perceptions of the need for hospital play services in Hong Kong hospital settings. In addition, demographic information, including age, gender, occupation, and years of experience in taking care of hospitalized children, will be documented.

Data Analysis for the Phase I Study Data analysis will be performed using SPSS Statistics for Windows, V.26.0 (IBM). Continuous variables with normal distribution will be presented as the mean and standard deviation, and those with non-normal distribution will be presented as the median. Categorical variables will be presented as the frequency and proportion.

ii) Phase II Study A semi-structured interview will be conducted with randomly selected healthcare professionals who have participated in the Phase I study. A semi-structured interview guide will be developed by the research team, which includes a professor with extensive knowledge of and experience in conducting both quantitative and qualitative research related to pediatric patients and hospital play activities and a team of experts working in Playright with extensive experience in conducting hospital play interventions for hospitalized children. The interview guide will be further assessed for its relevancy and wording appropriateness by two advanced practice nurses working in Children's Hospital with extensive experience in providing care for hospitalized children.

A purposive sample of 20 healthcare professionals randomly selected from the Phase I study and 14 children previously admitted to hospitals, and their parents, will be recruited for the interviews. However, the actual sample size will depend on data saturation. A one-to-one audiotaped semi-structured in-depth interview will then be conducted with each participant until data saturation is achieved. Each interview will last approximately 20 to 30 minutes. During each interview, a research assistant will act as the interviewer to facilitate the informants to freely express their feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Another research assistant will act as an observer to document all non-verbal cues of the informants.