By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Child life specialists do more than break out the crayons and coloring books with sick kids. The work can be incredibly demanding.
“Sometimes it’s really hard when we go into a room and we have to have difficult conversations and a child isn’t doing well and then we go to the next room and play Candy Land,” said Regina Lozito, manager of Upstate’s child life program. “We can’t always make it better. We can do our best to help them through it.”
At Upstate, the team of 17 child life workers include 15 certified child life specialists. Lozito has a bachelor’s in child psychology and master’s in child life, along with 600 hours of internship. After those achievements, she was able to sit for the certification exam.
“People think you get to play with kids all day, but there’s a lot of psychology that goes into it,” Lozito said. “We make sure kids and families understand why they’re in the hospital, what’s expected of them, what will happen. What does anesthesia mean? Will they spend the night? We do a lot of normalizing the environment. What happens on the outside we have inside the hospital.”
That could include trick-or-treating, providing access to education so kids don’t fall behind, and maintaining a family resource center and playrooms. Child life services include helping children adjust to lifelong changes that result from an illness or accident and bereavement support to the family as well.
Child life specialists may work in a variety of medical settings, both out patient and in patient. They often perform a psychological evaluation on the fly to assess how much information children can process and understand.
“A lot feel like they’re being punished,” Lozito said. “We’ve taken away their control and things they love to do. Our job is to make sure they understand why they’re there and we’re not trying to be mean. It’s not fun here always.”
The goals of child life work include improving emotional outcomes as well as ones more easily measured, such as lower blood pressure, less pain medication, better compliance during procedures and recovery and faster healing. The results can be long-lasting.
“Kids who experience a positive situation in the hospital are much more likely to be medically complaint adults,” Lozito said. “They understand the medical system better. You know what’s happening and what’s expected of you and everyone’s job. Your job is to sit still; the nurse’s job is to insert the IV.”
Showing children a procedure on themselves or on a doll can help them prepare.
Lozito encourages anyone interested in working as a child life specialist to look at www.childlife.org to become accustomed with what the profession entails. She sees the potential for a lot of growth in the field in that at her organization alone, the staff grew from three in her department in 2000 to 17 currently.
“We’re growing fast and we need more people to fill the positions,” Lozito said. “I have clinics contacting me.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the average mean wage is $60,380 for a child life specialist.