Purpose: Approximately a quarter of cancer patients are parents to young children. One unique challenge faced by this patient group is the difficulty of accessing childcare support during medical appointments. Hospital-based childcare options could represent a solution to this problem, but to this point, no comprehensive scans have described existing on-site childcare centers. The purpose of this study is to identify and characterize on-site childcare services available to patients at selected North American hospitals. This information could inform the development of similar programs for cancer patients.
Methods: Using publicly available information, an environmental scan of the grey literature was conducted to investigate Canadian and American hospitals for the presence of childcare services. A standardized data collection tool was used to extract center characteristics.
Results: Twenty-six childcare centers were identified across 161 hospitals in both Canada and the USA, with 8/55 Canadian hospitals and 18/106 American hospitals having patient-accessible on-site services. The majority of the centers were associated with pediatric hospitals (77%). Only a single childcare center was associated with a cancer hospital. All centers accommodated children between the ages of 3 and 8. Most centers were open for over 30 h per week (77%) and were free of charge to users (89%). Other characteristics, including capacity and staffing, varied widely.
Conclusions: These results represent an inventory of patient-accessible, on-site childcare services currently available at selected North American hospitals. Cancer patients who are also parents may especially benefit from this kind of support.
Keywords: Hospital childminding; On-site childcare; Parents with cancer; Psychosocial support; Supervised playrooms.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.