Children's hospital

Some children and young people have to spend relatively long periods in hospital, so having access to play and teaching staff can also be an important part of their care.

[7] Designs for the new Cambridge Children's Hospital, approved in 2022, plan to fully integrate mental and physical health provision for children and young people, bringing together services of three partners: Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, and the University of Cambridge with physical and mental health services located alongside research activity.

Florence's Hospital of the Innocent (Ospedale degli Innocenti) was originally a charity based orphanage which opened in 1445; its aim was to nurse sick and abandoned infants back to health.

The Scottish paediatrician George Armstrong, who established the first British dispensary, in 1769, was against in-patient care for sick children.

[10]Objections to admission were sometimes based on pragmatic reasons, e.g. reducing the threat of cross infection from children with diseases such as typhus, diphtheria and measles, that were a major cause of infant mortality.

In the mid-19th century western world, middle-class women and physicians became increasingly concerned about the well-being of children in poor living conditions.

Social reformers blamed the emergence of the industrial society and poor parents for not properly caring for their children.

By the 1870s, the prevalent view among doctors and nurses was that children were better off by being removed to hospital, away from the often poor, unsanitary conditions at home.

The "undeserving poor" were sent to workhouse infirmaries, whilst middle class children were generally cared for, and indeed operated on, at home.

"[20] In order to raise their status further, physicians began organizing children's hospitals; by doing so, it also brought attention and importance to their speciality in the modern health care system.

Nicholl believed that hospitalisation wasn't necessary, and children were better cared from in their own home by their parents and by nurses making daily visits.

[22] During the interwar period, leading up to World War II, psychiatrists expressed concerns about children being away from parents, such as during hospitalisation.

René Spitz, an Austrian-American psychoanalyst, published an article in 1945 in which he noted deleterious effects of hospitalisation, based on his research with institutionalised children.

However, Edelston wrote in 1948, that many of this colleagues still refused to believe in hospitalisation trauma[23] Bowlby studied 44 juvenile thieves and found that a significantly high number had experienced early and traumatic separation from their mother.

[25] A.D. Hunt reported that:The hospitalised child was considered essentially a biological unit, far better off without his parents who, on weekly or bi-weekly visiting hours, were fundamentally toxic in their effect, causing noise, generally disorderly conduct, and rejection by hospital personnel.

The Report had effects on hospital care of children in the UK and New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States.

[35] Every year U.S. News & World Report ranks the top children's hospitals and pediatric specialties in the United States.