The Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center Celebrates Child Life Month

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. - March 24, 2014 - PRLog -- This March, the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center in Yonkers, N.Y. has been celebrating Child Life Month!

At the Pediatric Center, our Child Life staff engage our medically complex residents in empowering play and sensory exploration to help them better manage health-related stressors. We have three certified Child Life specialists on staff who are experts in child development and who help our children and their families persevere during some of life’s most challenging times. Children can develop fear and anxiety when they are in a healthcare or hospital-setting, but Child Life strategies like education, self-expression activities and developmentally appropriate play help to decrease these fears and promote positive coping strategies.

Developmentally appropriate play can include activities that work to improve a child’s fine motor or gross motor skills, as well as their social skills. Activities can also focus on therapeutic release or be child-directed, which gives the child control of the play situation. Medical play, in particular, is an example of this.

“Medical play is crucial since a child’s first language is play,” said Mariel Maffetone, M.S. C.L., C.C.L.S., C.P.M.T., one of our Child Life specialists. “It helps us to identify, and then clarify, any misconceptions that a child may hold about a procedure or about their condition. Medical play has also been used to familiarize parents and even siblings with the medical equipment that a resident needs like tracheostomies or gastric feeding tubes,” she added.

According to Maffetone, helping a child to become familiar with a medical experience or enabling them to regain control of their situation are two of the major purposes of this modality, which is why medical play is used to help children cope with procedures like blood draws, tracheostomy changes, gastric feeding tube care, casting, immunizations, etc. Medical play also gives our children the opportunity to play doctor or nurse with their Child Life specialist or even with a doll as a patient in a safe environment. “This can promote a sense of control in an environment that these children typically feel that they have little or no control over,” Maffetone explained. “Many times our children and their families just need someone to take the time to allow them to manipulate the equipment and address their concerns at a pace they’re comfortable with.”

Another unique component of medical play is how universal it is. Not only is it used with children of all ages (and their families), but it’s also used with residents of varying developmental abilities. For example, Maffetone explained, non-verbal children can convey their comprehensive awareness of medical procedures by lining up items in proper sequence. “They’ll lay out a tourniquet, alcohol wipe, butterfly needle, gauze pad and a Band-Aid for blood draws or outline the steps of a tracheostomy change,” she said. “I love using medical play to empower each of our residents to take an active role in their medical experience rather than a passive one. I love the sense of confidence and mastery that they exude when they then get to teach me about a procedure that they’ve conquered or use medical equipment to tell me about a procedure they underwent. It’s so rewarding.”

Child Life specialists are the only professionals trained to engage in medical play with our residents and their families. All three of our Child Life specialists hold masters degrees with academic backgrounds in theories of child development, family systems, developmental approaches to stress and coping, education, psychology, therapeutic play, counseling and bereavement. They’ve attained their Child Life specialist professional certification through the national Child Life Council after meeting requisite academic and clinical criteria. To learn more about our Child Life program, you can visit: setonpediatric.org/espc.

About the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center

The Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center is a not-for-profit, pediatric specialty nursing facility, serving children from infancy through age 21, who are among the most medically complex children in New York State. The Pediatric Center, which is a 137-bed and 165,000-square-foot complex located in Yonkers, just celebrated its 25th year of service. This state-of-the-art, child-centered building is the only LEED Gold certified “green” pediatric facility in the country. Children come to us with serious medical and neurological challenges including, but not limited to: premature birth complications; cerebral palsy; congenital heart disease; chronic lung disease; chromosome, metabolic and respiratory disorders; muscular and neurological diseases; and immunodeficiency syndromes. We provide comprehensive healthcare, rehabilitation and special education services to all our residents. Learn more about the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center at setonpediatric.org and find us on Facebook at facebook.com/setonpediatric.