How to become a teacher in the hospital: acquiring knowledge and skills through experience

Published online: 20 Dec 2023. A hospital-based school is offered to hospitalised children with the aim of promoting school continuity and preventing disengagement from school; children have the chance to attend a hospital-based school with hospital teachers during long recoveries. The aim of this study is to obtain an in-depth understanding of hospital teaching: which training hospital teachers receive before teaching the hospitalised children and how they work with children in a hospitalbased school (i.e. didactical methodologies, student’s knowledge evaluation, etc.)? Twenty hospital teachers (N = 2, males; N = 18, females) from the Meyer Children’s Hospital in Florence took part in an ad hoc semi-structured interview. The thematic analysis through QCAmap highlighted the following aspects: training of hospital teachers is various; no teacher had previously taught in a hospital or had taken part in specific trainings about hospital settings before becoming a hospital teacher; not only didactic but also medical skills are needed; a hospital context requires extremely flexible and personalised teaching and hospital teachers think that the connection with the class group is an important opportunity for the hospitalised child. In the future, it will be necessary to adequately train hospital teachers to carry out this delicate work with the hospitalised children.