A child life specialist is someone who works with patients and families to help them cope
with their experience.
Whether it's a new diagnosis or a procedure, helping siblings feel part of the journey
or helping parents learn how to communicate with their children about what's going on.
Child Life specialists are integrated throughout the whole hospital, and so we're present in
the clinic setting.
If a patient is coming for a follow-up visit, and we've been working with them in the hospital,
we would meet with them in their clinic visit to follow up and see how they were doing at
home.
We meet with them in the emergency department when they're getting their IV for the first
time, or having an x-ray.
We can provide both education and support during that procedure.
Ideally we become a part of the journey at the beginning.
Most of our doctors here try to make a referral right away because they know that their going
to be explaining things that maybe the child doesn't understand.
So they like to have the child life specialist there.
We also do a lot of work throughout the hospitalization to help kids understand their diagnosis, and
help families understand the diagnosis and how to explain it at a level that kids understand.
Educate families a lot on the language they use, but also how to support the family rhythm
or routine and keep it as normal as possible because that will help the patient recover
better and help the family stay as intact as possible, even though this is a big interruption
in their daily life.
We get phone calls from families or even the surgery scheduler saying "hey this mom was
really upset or nervous, can you take a moment to call her and talk to her before she comes
for the visit?"
I talked with a mom this morning about her son having surgery next month and she was
like, "how do I tell him he has to be scheduled for surgery?How do I respond to his questions
if he asks certain questions?"
We do a lot of phone call visits.
Sometimes if parents are coming in just for a consult visit, we can meet them to help,
again, provide that information ahead of time on how to talk with their child.
Working with parents is helping to empower them to provide the best care for their child
because they're the expert.
They are the ones that are bring the child here but then also taking them home.
We believe that play is the language of children and it really helps them express themselves.
Giving children the opportunity for play in the hospital is really important to give them
a sense of mastery over their experience.
It gives them back some of that power, because even as an adult you lose your power in the
hospital.
You don't get to make decisions of when you get up out of bed and when you go to the bathroom
and all of those things.
Empower them to be able to make even the smallest decisions, we see great outcomes.
One of the things that we do that's specialized more to child life specialists is called "medical
play."
The child has sutures in their right arm so maybe the doll has sutures, and we cut and
help them see what it's going to be like to have the stitches removed.
And then another type of play we do definitely is post-trauma kind of play.
If they've been through an accident or they've seen something that was hard to see, letting
them sort of play that out with maybe a dollhouse or we have play hospitals where they can reenact
things.
We use actual medical equipment when we are talking with both the patients and the siblings.
Demonstrating the actual equipment that's being used, letting them tangibly feel it,
manipulate it so they can gain that sense of control so it's not as unfamiliar.
We take pictures, so we use the iPad a lot so they can see the actual room so they're
prepared for what to see and just validating the feelings and saying "it's okay to talk
with them.
It's okay to cry.
It's okay to be angry."
But just giving them that permission, almost, to experience those different feelings, and
to really just be true to themselves.
A lot of our patients post-surgery have to work on increasing their respirations.
We have a tool that patients put a marshmallow in and then they put a target on the wall
and they blow the marshmallow through the launcher to try to hit the target on the wall.
It's a fun way to increase their inspiration post-surgery.
Kids that are prepared and understand what happen are often more successful in navigating
the whole experience, as far as their acceptance of what's happening and coping.