Investigating Children’s Perception of Nurses Through Their Drawings

Abstract

Hospitalized children can have various fantasies about hospital, health staff, and related tools and equipment. They need to develop new coping strategies for compliance with hospitalization.This study aimed to investigate the perception of nurses by children with acute and chronic illness through their drawings. The study was carried out using a descriptive research model. “Nurses through the eyes of sick children data collection form” was used in data collection procedure. The instruction “draw a picture of a nurse, please” was used to get the children to draw a picture. The majority of the children portrayed nurses as a smiling face. The children with chronic diseases featured nurses more in their drawings and they mentioned more nurse duties. The most important sign of the progression of nursing is that the mentioning of the modern roles of nursing by the children in their drawings and expressions. As children are influenced by their emotions, thoughts, observations, and experiences while drawing pictures, nurses can determine their thoughts about the disease, hospitals, physicians, and nurses by having sick children draw pictures. © The Author(s) 2017.