ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
ANALYSIS OF PROSPECTIVE CHILD DEVELOPMENT SPECIALISTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE HOSPITAL ENVIRONMENT
Provisionally accepted
- Çankırı Karatekin University Faculty of Health Sciences, Çankırı, Türkiye
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Hospitals are among the most important institutions providing healthcare services and contribute to public health through the coordination of various units. Although child development specialists also work in hospitals, this practice is generally unknown, because they are not directly involved in diagnosis and treatment processes, and therefore are not directly associated with healthcare services or the hospital environment. In the present study conducted with 30 students from the Child Development Department of Çankırı Karatekin University, Faculty of Health Sciences, changes in Child Development Department students' perceptions of the hospital environment before and after their hospital practice were investigated. The data obtained were analyzed using thematic analysis. The comparison of their pre-and post-application drawings revealed that their perceptions of the hospital environment greatly changed, and their perspectives broadened. After the internship, their tendency to view the hospital as a child development specialist's workplace differed from their pre-implementation views, but not much. It is recommended that the theoretical course content should be further enriched with topics on hospitals, diseases, and healthcare services before the internship, and that field trips to healthcare institutions should be organized as part of the course. Keywords: Perception, child development specialist, hospital, student, drawing analysis
Keywords: Child development specialist, Drawing analysis, Hospital, Perception, student
Received: 03 Oct 2025; Accepted: 27 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 TUNÇAY. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Güzin Yasemin TUNÇAY
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.