Child life specialist

Hi, I'm Beth Moneck.

I'm a certified child life specialist.

I've been that for about 22 years now.

And that role is a clinician in the hospital who provides developmentally appropriate words and language for kids and families to help them understand maybe a new diagnosis or what being in the hospital is all about.

We've been partners in caring with them since 2019.

So it's been a longstanding, I guess, tradition, if you will, to incorporate the Beads of Courage program into the emotional care for the kids.

At the hospital, it's the child life specialists, the nurses, the doctors, the clinicians who give the beads and use it as a part of emotional care within the medical care that they provide.

Within the program, we have beads that are unique to a particular experience.

Genevieve Lowry has been a certified child life specialist for 36 years and has had a great deal of experience working with parents, children, adolescents, aspiring child life specialists, and already certified child life specialists who wanna continue to learn different aspects of their craft.

Genevieve is here today to talk about what she has accomplished since 1990 in this field, which will show a very entrepreneurial style that signifies her work.

Thank you for listening to this podcast.

[gentle music] Genevieve Lowry began her career as a certified child life specialist in 1990, and 36 years later she is still going strong in a profession which is so important to kids and their families in the world of pediatric cancer.

Genevieve is here today to detail the critical role that she has played for these kids, their families, and for aspiring child life specialists, and it is an honor for me to introduce Genevieve to my listeners and welcome her to my podcast.

Thank you very much for joining me.

It's great to have you here.

[chuckles]

So my name's Talia Moore.

I'm a certified child life specialist.

Um, many people have not heard about what that is until stepping into the hospital environment.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

... head-on of what that would be like.

So imagine then a child life specialist walks in the room-

Mm-hmm

And I just kind of just want to dig into why, you know, your why of why you think that's so important or why wish is so important to your patients.

Well, as a child life specialist for many, many years, working with the children during their diagnosis and treatment, I learned very quickly that a wish has meaning.

just a special power from the beginning, from the onset of the possibility of having a wish to the child getting that opportunity to think of what in the world it could be.

They sort of just go through all of the, you know, subjects and areas and that just right away it's a distraction from the everyday treatment and procedures that they're going through.

So a trip or an experience where everybody's involved, even a swing set in the backyard that you're sharing with your sister or your brother, it makes a big difference because families are fragile to some sense during this experience and the time.

Yeah.

You work with a lot of the child life specialists inside the hospital and you shared with us that you share with them a lot of the stories that you get when you get publications from Make-A-Wish or emails.

And why is that important to share with them and for their, you know, for their, you know, the fulfillment of their job to see that what a wish is provided to a child?

But at the crux of it is just making sure that everybody is on the same page and that we're collaborating together so that we can make sure to provide the best care.

So in the hospital, the different teams that you might have include Child Life, which is one that's super important for anybody who's working in pediatrics.

I think that child life specialists are amazing.

When my son was in the hospital, one of the first things that I did was to reach out to the child life specialist, the respiratory specialist.

It might be speech therapist, occupational therapist, nurses.

It could be the CNA who's helping the patient to get out of bed.

They're just having a good time with their therapist.

And then you'll see some of our wish list items, but we have our Child Life department-

Yeah

... which is really at the heart of what we do here at Kapiʻolani.

So we have our slime-making station.

Yeah.

By the way, you said this is, like, maybe one of the most, uh, sought after items in the Child Life area.

This is so popular.

Happy Child Life Month.

Did you know that March is the celebration of child life specialists? This episode emphasizes the importance of community, ongoing learning, and the advocacy within child life.

Welcome

I love to go running and I cannot wait for this awesome weather to start.

You're so close that winter is going to melt away very soon and we're almost to spring.

Happy Child Life Month to you.

Oh,

thank you so much.