Child Life specialists brighten picture for hospitalized kids

Her drive to help children cope with the trials they face while staying in the hospital brought her here – finger-painting with 3-year-old Zoe Collins, who just had heart surgery. Messy hands covered in paint may not seem like something a young professional would want as part of her job, but Emily Wiebke wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Great finger painting Zoe. This looks so beautiful,” Wiebke said.

Wiebke is a Child Life specialist in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at MUSC Children’s Hospital. She’s been here for four years, working with children in the cardiology department. Wiebke says the main role of a Child Life specialist is to work with children of all ages and assess the potential stress factors for them during their stay in the hospital. She finds ways to address them and help the kids cope. 

Elizabeth Collins, Zoe’s mom, said it’s been wonderful to have Wiebke walk through this process with them. Zoe first came to the hospital after being born with two holes in her heart. She also had two valves that were merged and needed to be separated. After the surgery, Zoe was on her way to recovery.

“Our stay at MUSC has been really good. We love the nurses, they take great care of us, and we really love Emily, she’s awesome,” Collins said. “Yesterday, she took us outside and we played with toys on a blanket and it was so fun. I also have a 2-year-old, and when we were here for pre-op, they were getting really fussy but then Emily came in and brought toys for them to play with, and she made it a lot easier.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, using play as a form of therapy helps decrease children’s emotional distress and helps them develop coping tools throughout their medical experience.

Recommendations from the AAP show that the use of Child Life specialists helps combat the fear and anxiety that hospitalization can cause, so children feel more at ease and can cope in the healthiest way possible. Research shows 50 to 75 percent of hospitalized children develop significant fear and anxiety before surgery. Research also has shown that physiologic responses, such as palm sweating, excessive body movement, tachycardia and hypertension, can be reduced with therapeutic play.

Wiebke says a big part of what makes being a Child Life specialist so rewarding is seeing kids go from being scared, upset or anxious to gaining coping skills and being able to go back to being a typical, playful child. 

“Parents a lot of times will say that this is the happiest they’ve seen their child since they’ve been in the hospital. So that’s a very reassuring thing to hear as a Child Life specialist and helps us know that what we do is beneficial and helpful to the child,” says Wiebke. 

Though the work can be fun and rewarding, it’s also challenging. Working in the cardiology department, Wiebke sees some of the sickest children in the hospital. Having a child she’s worked with who doesn’t make it definitely affects her.

“It makes us really sad, but also humbles us. To see the strength of the families is always so inspiring,” Wiebke said.

Wiebke said many qualities make MUSC’s Child Life program stand out. “One of our primary philosophies is the idea of play. Our department is very good at knowing and recognizing that children, whether in or out of the hospital, need to use play to build rapport, express themselves, feel safe and gain a sense of control. Something different about us is the emphasis we put on normalizing and therapeutic play rather than being hospital teachers and simply telling kids about procedures they will be having.”

MUSC also runs two grant-funded programs with the Child Life Department that help children. Ozzy’s Closet is for kids who are on isolation precautions and can’t go in designated play areas in the hospital. It brings toys, activities and games into the children’s rooms that they can keep. 

The other program, Beads of Courage, acts as a visual journal for the child’s stay in the hospital. The kids are given a different colored bead to represent every medical experience they have.

“A lot of families will string the beads together and they make these beautiful, long, beaded necklaces that people take really cute pictures of their kids in. A lot of these kids are so young when they go through all of this, so a lot of parents have told me they can’t wait for their kids to get older so they can show them their beads and tell them how strong they were,” Wiebke said.

She said making sure children don’t remember the hospital as a scary place, but instead as a place where they’re able to be a kid and have someone who is advocating for them, is a huge part of what Child Life specialists do. 

Wiebke is also mindful of how the child’s experience in the hospital can affect family members. “It can be a very indirect relationship, in that by providing support to the child, you’re supporting the parent because you’re relieving that child’s anxiety, which helps the parents feel more calm,” says Wiebke.

As Zoe’s mother saw, Wiebke makes sure brothers and sisters are taken care of, too.

Wiebke says the play she and her fellow Child Life specialists are facilitating involves a lot more than fun and games. There’s always a purpose to the materials they select. They keep in mind a child’s developmental level, the way the child is processing time spent in the hospital and how those particular materials can help the child cope.

“I think we’re really fortunate to have a hospital that values our role and our services. They recognize how valuable our Child Life Department can be,” Wiebke said. “Our cardiac unit is such a specialized unit. Given that we’re the only hospital in the state that preforms cardiac surgeries, it lends itself to being a very well oiled machine. The fact that we get to work with a very tight-knit, multidisciplinary team is a really cool opportunity.”

For Wiebke, seeing a child go from being upset and expressing a lot of fear and anxiety before or after surgery to overcoming those thoughts and feelings may be the most rewarding part of her job. “I get to see some kids go home and, on their way out, they’re smiling and waving at their doctors, nurses and Child Life specialist. It’s then that you can tell the interventions we were able to provide really do make a difference in how that child views the hospital.”