Play Games in the Waiting Room of Cancer Units: A Preliminary Study

Background: There are many kinds of cancer treatment but to receive any of them the patient must stay in a waiting room in the hospital ambulatories. Although medical caregivers need to offer a pleasant environment to the patients, the waiting room remains a place that can make the treatment even more difficult. One pleasant way to use the time is to play games, but the use of games in ambulatories for cancer treatment has not yet been reported.

Aims: The aim of this study was to check the acceptance of games in waiting rooms for cancer treatment. It was an observational, cross-sectional analytical study, with a randomized sample from two hospitals in two different cities state of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Method: Patients were invited to fulfil a form with demographic data (sex, age, cancer type) and to take part in one of the following games: Checkers, Dominoes, Memory game, Tic-tac-toe, or Uno (American card game). Patients were asked about their feelings before and after the games.

Results: The group included 192 patients from 34 to 86.7 years old; 56% women. Skin cancer was the most common cancer type (47%), followed by breast cancer (21%) and prostate cancer (12%); 34% patients (N=65) accepted playing a game during the waiting time for medical procedures.

Discussion and Conclusions: Among those who decided to play there were patients from 40-87 years old, from both sexes, and with different cancer types. Although most of the patients refused to play, the results showed that playing while waiting for medical procedures is a way to improve the environment in hospital waiting rooms and can be practices at any age and for both sexes, for different cancer types. The emotion most reported was joy, but fear and anger and surprise were also described. Only a few patients changed their emotion after the game, but in such a case, feelings of fear or anger were changed to happiness. Many patients refused to take part in the study, so it is not possible to say how they felt, and it might be they refused it because they did not feel well. To play just once may not be enough to change the feeling inside of the waiting room. More studies are needed to understand why there is a resistance to play in the hospital or to take part in research and studies should also observe the association between playing in the waiting room and the adherence to treatment.