WLJ WONG

Dear Sir

There is much concern over the quality improvement of hospital environment in paediatric wards nowadays. Many paediatric wards in Hong Kong are being renovated with colourful surroundings. They are no longer "a horrible place" to go to because they are actually an "imitated playground". However, most resources go to support the improvement of hospital environment such as painting the colourful walls, but how about the clumsy-looking "uniform" the child-patients wear? Of course a jolly hospital environment can alleviate the pains or stresses for the child patients and their parents. But if hospital garment which is worn "next to the skin" is also comfortable* (comfort defined as "freedom from hardship. pain and trouble") enough, it can also alleviate pains and stresses. Thus far, there is little remark on this issue except for the design of premature infants hospital garment.

In an attempt to provide the child patients with comfortable garments and to investigate the problems of existing children's hospital garment, a survey has been conducted to elicit information from different points of view. There have been 2 methods of interview adopted:

(1) Face-to-face interview was adopted to deal with the child patients and the carers of the child patients;

(2) Mail interview was adopted to deal with the health care staff.

There were a total of 20 copies sent to the doctors and a total of 168 copies sent to the nurses (in paediatric ward of Queen Mary Hospital). There were 18 and 95 returns from the doctors and nurses respectively. There were 52 child patients' carers and 44 child patients (4-9 years old) took part in the face-to-face interview.

From the results of the survey, four issues are identified as follows:

(1) There are some problems of existing children's hospital garment which include design, size, appearance and fabric quality problems;

(2) There are some difference on the colour preferences between adults and children. As adults generally prefer pastel colours, child patients generally prefer bright colours.

(3) Most of child patients give negative feelings towards hospital garment. While they wear the garment. they think it symbolises the sick role, separation from their parents and inability to go home etc.;

(4) The most important criteria of wearing children's hospital garment is cleanliness and neatness, and followed by ease of dressing and giving a psychological uplift.

Through garment re-design which addresses the physiological and psychological needs of child patients as well as medical aspects of clothing (hygiene), this may help minimise the negative effects of hospitalisation and also promote positive images to the public. It is important to start redesigning hospital garment for our child patients.

Acknowledgement:

I thank Dr YL Kwok, Dr K Chan and Prof CY Yeung for advice.

WLJ WONG
Institute of Textiles and Clothing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University