The act of playing and the child with leukemia in hospital oncological treatment
Play. Cancer. Child. Hospital. Winnicott. Psychoanalysis.
Children who experience severe physical comorbidities, faced with the diagnosis of leukemia-type cancer and the need for hospital cancer treatment, experience a sudden rupture in the circulation environments and in the access to playful experiences. This dissertation aimed to investigate and analyze the play of children undergoing cancer treatment for leukemia in the hospital environment. This is an exploratory qualitative research. It was developed in a hospital, with eight children in treatment, of both sexes, aged between six and eleven years and their respective guardians. Participating meetings were held with both audiences, which were divided into five stages: 1) application of a sociodemographic questionnaire; 2) individual semi-structured interview recorded with the child's guardian; 3) presentation of the research proposal and the play box to the child; 4) playing time with hospital materials in the form of toys; and finally, 5) individual application with the child of the Theme Drawing-Story Procedure (PDE-T). The
methodological path of data analysis was built from the proposition of Minayo's thematic analysis.