Certified Child Life Specialist

As a member of the Child Life Team, plans, develops, and provides Child Life programming for a given clinical area to best meet the psychosocial, emotional, and developmental needs of pediatric patients and their families. Using age-appropriate play, CCLS considers the issues children face in health care settings and assesses patient needs for: normal growth and development, education, preparation, medical play, coping strategies or other issues to help them in their mastery of the environment. CCLS is responsible for providing child life interventions to a specific patient population within the policies and procedures of Geisinger. All meet the required qualifications, as outlined by the nationally known Association of Child Life Professionals to provide care for patients in the assigned pediatric clinical areas or other patient care areas, as needed. Required to maintain professional certification through continuing education opportunities. Evaluates child's developmental stage, ability to understand and cope with the health care environment, temperament and emotional state. Develops a strategic plan to reduce the fear and anxiety a child experiences with the health care environment. Implements specialized services to best meet the individual child's needs including: medical play, preparation for procedures, operations or other medical events, teaching and implementing coping strategies, providing education about disease process and treatment to both the child and their family. Identifies patient and family coping strategies in daily routine and applies these strategies to assist patients and their families in coping with the stress of hospitalization, illness, death, and loss. Educates patient, family, and staff to other techniques to aid a child in coping and insures technique is age appropriate for the development, and emotional state of the child. Assists in the implementation of such techniques, monitors its effectiveness and alters the plan as necessary. Responsible for leading the child, staff and family through coping strategies during medical procedures. Educates and prepares patients and their families for medical procedures, disease processes and mastery of the healthcare environment using appropriate and therapeutic play activities as treatment tools. Interprets and communicates patient's perception of diagnosis and treatment as revealed through play and other means of communication, both verbal and nonverbal, to staff and family. Integrates Child Life services by providing consultation to other health care workers regarding developmental and behavioral issues which impact on patient care. Creates, implements and orients other health care staff to age appropriate behavior reward methods to promote a patient's adaptation to treatment and encourage patient cooperation. Creates and distributes resources about child health and safety in general as needed. Assures therapeutic and safe environments for individual and group play. Selects, purchases and maintains the safety and cleanliness of toys, games, and other equipment used in the play areas to comply with departmental infection control policies and procedures. Documents Child Life interventions in the patient's medical record in accordance with Geisinger policies and procedures. Participates in record keeping of vital statistics for the Child Life Department demonstrating which Child Life services have been provided to patients. Educates, and acts as resource for, health care professionals regarding the psychosocial issues of pediatric health care, and the impact of illness, injury, and hospitalization on patients and their families. Develops and schedules in-services as needed for multidisciplinary team members and community groups. Interviews, orients, coordinates, schedules and supervises Child Life volunteers in their daily work with patients in all patient care areas.