Hi Air

Thanks for your comments, and I do totally agree with you. Bereavement, serious illness, hospitals can all being very difficult issues to talk about with children and I know that nursery nurse training did not give me the complete set of skills to deal with these issues in all situations.

When we all train to work with children, what ever the qualification, we do cover such a wide range of topics and age ranges, we learn such a large amount of information and skills. However qualified childcarers, nursery nurses & playworkers who saw a child with with an unusual rash on a child we would recomend they visited the doctor and if a child had real difficulties with speech we may suggest consulting a speech and language therapist. I think it would be great if a issue surrounding hospital or a long term medical issue arose that childcarers, nursery nurses & playworkers would feel able to either suggest a family contact the play specialist at the hospital they are receiving treatment or maybe with the parents permission contact the play specialist at the local hospital to discuss it.

I know that if the ward had a child who had regressed developmentally due to a serious medical condition, nurses or myself may contact the child's nursery or pre school to find out about developmental mile stones the child may have previously achieved. I hope childcarers feel they can contact a play specialist to discuss issues too.

I do sometimes wonder whether it is in the training we receive. I know when I trained as a nursery nurse, which was a few years ago, that I was only really told about a hospital play specialist as a professional who a child may see in hospital or as a possible career option, not as a professional to liaise with. I wonder if this is the same today, for people training with work with children??

I do feel that is one of the wonderful things about sites like this one. You are able to find out many peoples different feelings and perspectives on topics.

hattyhar