Construction of an assessment instrument of occupational therapy in pediatric hospital contexts: systematizing information

Children’s hospitalization is a stressful experience that may lead to important loss of autonomy of thechild with chronic disease. Hospitalized children should be evaluated by the occupational therapist regarding thecoping with the disease and the impact of hospitalization in the performance of their abilities in different areasof occupation. This paper aims to describe the process of development of an occupational therapy evaluation instrument in the pediatric hospital context of the Pediatric Institute from the Clinical Hospital of the MedicalCollege of the University of Sao Paulo (“Instituto da Crian a – HC – USP”). Two studying processes werecarried out: a bibliographic research and a research of the daily issues of the authors during the assessmentof the hospitalized children. No specific evaluation instruments related to the impact of hospitalization duringdaily activities and/or children development were found in the bibliographic research. Due to the complexity ofdemands presented by patients, the wide age range and the needs to elaborate a specific evaluation of OccupationalTherapy, the following three instruments were elaborated: Screening, assessment of Occupational Therapy inpediatric hospital contexts 1 and 2. The instruments are being tested for further analysis.