en Nursing Orginal research <strong><em>Background:</em></strong> Childhood cancer is a grueling event that can affect the lives of patients and their parents both psychologically and physically. Playing is a way to reduce this problem in children with cancer.<br> <strong><em>Objectives: </em></strong>The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of individual play therapy on hope, adjustment and pain response of hospitalized children with cancer.<br> <strong><em>Methods:</em></strong> This quasi-experimental study was performed among 30 children with cancer aged 8 to 12 years. Subjects were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, individual play therapy intervention was performed for two months (10 sessions). The study instruments included: Snyder&rsquo;s Hope Scale, Pediatric Pain Response Questionnaire (Walker et al.), and Dokhanchi&rsquo;s Adjustment Questionnaire (1998). In order to analyze the data, repeated measures analysis and Bonferroni post hoc test were performed in SPSS, version 16.<br> <strong><em>Results</em>:</strong>&nbsp;In this study, the mean age of participants in the experimental and control groups was 9.36<span dir="RTL">&plusmn;</span>1.68 and 10.1<span dir="RTL">&plusmn;</span>1.98 years, respectively. The results of this study showed that the difference between the three evaluation stages in all variables, except the post-test with the follow-up of hope variable, was significant in the experimental group (p<span dir="RTL">&ge;</span>0.001). But no significant difference was observed between the three evaluation stages in the control group (p<span dir="RTL">&le;</span>0.001).<strong><em>Conclusion:</em></strong> It seems that play therapy intervention has an effect on the research variables. Given that the research was conducted on a small sample in a hospital, it is suggested that similar research be conducted to increase the external validity of the present study. play therapy, hope, pain response, child, cancer 10 21 http://nmcjournal.zums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-784-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Behdokht Alavi behdokhtalavi2020@gmail.com 10031947532846008297 10031947532846008297 No Department of Health Psychology, Khoamshahr-Persian Gulf International Branch, Islamic Azad University, Khoramshahr, Iran Behnam Makvandi makvandi_b@yahoo.com 10031947532846008298 10031947532846008298 Yes Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran Parviz Asgari askary@yahoo.com 10031947532846008299 10031947532846008299 No Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran Fardin Moradimanesh nmafrah@yahoo.com 10031947532846008300 10031947532846008300 No Department of Psychology, Dezful Branch, Islamic Azad University, Dezful, Iran