Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (EFE).- The Maternal and Child University Hospital of the Canary Islands has incorporated into its services “Tales that heal”, a project that started with the purpose of reducing pain for children hospitalized in the center with the help of narrators and children’s readings.
“Storytelling is a method that can reduce anxiety, stress or pain”, explained to the press the head of the Hospital’s Pediatric Service, Svetlana Pavlovic, together with the president of the Nursing Teaching Subcommittee, Ángeles Ferrera , the manager of the hospital center, José Blanco, and the director of the State Public Library, Antonio Morales.
With this initiative, framed in the Plan for the Promotion of Reading 2021-2024 of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Maternal and Child Hospital hopes to achieve “more pleasant” hospital stays with an “impact on the development and mental health” of patients, Pavlovic has indicated.
“Just ten minutes of storytelling lowers the cortisol level in children, the hormone responsible for releasing stressful situations”, the president of the Nursing Teaching Subcommittee, Ángeles Ferreras, has referred to this, and in connection with a study 2021 with a sample of 81 children in Brazil.
Ferreras has added the importance of caring for family members, since they are “the emotional support of children”, and for this reason, he has reasoned, the project incorporates “Tales of family respite”, audios created by the Canarian writer Daniel Martín, and “Tales that beat”, videos produced by the Biblioteca de Canarias.
These sessions are joined by stories told aloud by the narrator Loreto Socorro, either on the solidarity terrace for patients who can move, or in individual rooms.
For his part, the director of the Public Library of the State of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, has stressed the idea of maintaining the project for seven more years and “that it should not be a flash in the pan”. EFE