Child Life Specialists are experts in child development, who promote effective coping through play, preparation, education and self-expression activities. Child Life Specialists work to support patients and their families throughout their hospital stay. They provide emotional support for families, and encourage optimum development of children facing a broad range of challenging experiences, particularly those related to healthcare and hospitalization.
We understood that a visit to the hospital can be a scary experience for children. Illness, injury, strange surroundings, painful procedures, changes in routing and separation from family and friends can cause a patient to experience fear, anxiety and stress. Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas recognize that hospitalized children still need opportunities to just be kids. This is why we are the first hospital in the region to have a certified child-life specialist. Baptist Beaumont Hospital’s Child Life Specialist helps children from infants to teens and their families cope with a hospital experience by providing emotional and developmental support, giving honest information geared to a child’s level of understanding.
Child Life Specialists Provide:
The American Academy of Pediatrics affirms that child life is “an essential component of quality pediatric care,” and as such, child life services have become a standard in most pediatric hospital settings. Baptist Hospitals embraces this standard and is eager to provide these services to the members of Southeast Texas. The Child Life Specialist along with other medical staff strive to create a positive and child friendly environment to encourage healing.
- Play: to help children continue to learn and grow while they are in the hospital. Play provides opportunities to promote interaction, independence, normalcy, understanding and creativity. These activities are an important way for children to work out feelings and gain some control over their environment. Play can bring comfort and joy to a child facing the new and difficult challenges of a hospital stay.
- Holiday Celebrations: To ensure that the family’s hospital stay does not interfere with these special times of year.
- Medical play: to encourage children to express fears, misconceptions and gain a sense of control and understanding about what is happening to their body by learning about various tests, procedures and surgeries.
- Support before, during and after medical procedures and other stressful times.
- Education: To teach patients and their families about childhood growth and development and the effects of illness, treatment and recovery using a variety of teaching tools.
- Orientation to the hospital through tours and individual play.
- Hospital-stay coping tips.
- Distraction techniques with toys, books, and relaxation therapies to minimize the stress during an examination or procedure.
Download the Child-Life-Brochure