Ethans – before a child comes to the hospital

Child life specialists in our Children’s Hospital provide services for all the patients aged 0 to 17 years old. They may be chronic or long term, or they may just be here for day surgery, come have surgery, stay overnight and leave the next day. In either case they all need the same support because, while I often always say to a family, well if it’s the worst thing or it’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you, then it’s a scary thing, and so you need that preparation, you need that time and that care. When children are coming for surgery we will often have the child and family member come about 3 days or a week before so they can be walked through where they’re going to go, even for the parents, where are you going park, what door are you going to go in, what sort of people are you going to see, how long are you going to be here. For the child, what room are you going to go in, you’re going to change into these pajamas or gown in the hospital, you’re going to have this occimiter on your finger, you’re going to go in a room that looks like this and we’ll have pictures of the operating room. So what we basically do, whether we’re preparing them for something that’s quick in and out of the hospital or long term, is we’re going to go through all the steps using all their senses of what they’re going to experience when they come.  

It’s important for other health care professionals to be aware of what child life specialists can offer so they can utilize their services. Children go through a lot of different stressful and traumatic events especially coming to a health care centre. Children process information in a different way than adults do, and children need to be prepared. So I think some of the most important things that the rest of the healthcare team can know is,  

If I have a child who needs to have some information about how to learn some coping mechanisms, how to get some more information at a child’s level about the procedure they’re about to undergo, I need to call my child life specialist. I have a child who needs to play and be normalized and interact with their peers while in the hospital or their health care centre, I need to call my child life specialist.