Infant stimulation during hospitalization.

Stimulation is essential to the development of infants and children. They are developing skills related to gross motor, fine motor-adaptive, language, and personal-social functioning. Hospitalization can disrupt the developmental process for infants, even those without pre-existing developmental delays, if intervention is not provided. Hospitalized infants are often subjected to an overabundance of meaningless stimulation or understimulation. Nursing needs to insure provision of meaningful stimulation to help alleviate the effects of hospitalization. Parents and/or significant others need to be included whenever possible. A suggested infant stimulation program for hospitalized infants is presented. Practicality for the pediatric clinician facilitates easy intervention.