Comfort positions are recognized by child life professionals as an effective, low cost, and quick intervention for reducing stress during medical interventions for children and teens (Stephen, 1999). Despite research demonstrating these benefits, comfort positions can be misunderstood and underutilized by the medical community. Attendees will gain insight into how to implement comfort positioning into various medical settings. Recording date: 2017

Children impacted by death will likely experience intense grief and mourning. Child life specialists are able to assist children, families, and the community throughout the bereavement process. A review of death disclosure strategies, and tools to extend child life services in bereavement support in the pediatric hospital, adult hospital, and the school setting. Recording date: 2017

The amount of limited English proficient (LEP) patients and families present in hospitals continues to grow. In this presentation, attendees will learn about the role and characteristics of a medical interpreter and how to enhance meaningful interactions with LEP children and caregivers. Recording date: 2017

DOMAIN: Intervention; 1.5 PDU's - Engaging in difficult conversations is not solely about having the “right” words; it’s about how compassion, perspective, and words work together to create meaningful conversations.

This presentation discusses strategies for supporting families that utilize competing coping efforts in response to stressors. Whether attempting to cope with new diagnoses or end-of-life, stress is a shared experience. With limited space and time to process at an individual level, patients and families may respond with clashing coping behaviors. This session explores the specialist’s role in supporting multiple coping strategies, and provides an effective tool for navigating these experiences. Recording date: 2017

This webinar will discuss tactics and virtual programming ideas created by the entire team at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital – Mission Bay. We will share our ideas, what worked and didn’t work in regards to virtual programming and socialization opportunities for patients and families during COVID 19. Suggested Domain: Intervention

​This presentation will outline research conducted from analyzing 3.8 million online interactions about illness from pediatric patients. SUGGESTED DOMAIN: Intervention

Not so far in the future, in lieu of popping a pill, clinicians might prescribe a virtual beach vacation to ease aches and pains. Cardiologists might offer scenic tours of Icelandic fjords to lower blood pressure, instead of doubling up on drugs. Hospitals might immerse children in fantastical play lands while they receive chemotherapy or undergo frightening medical tests. It’s all starting to happen now because of virtual reality (VR). For decades, scientists in elite universities have been quietly discovering the surprising health benefits of VR for ailments ranging from burn injuries, to stroke, to acute stress. Over 3000 studies reveal that VR has an uncanny ability to block pain, calm nerves and boost mental health without drugs and their unwanted side effects. But the technology has been too expensive, unreliable and unwieldy for the research to translate beyond the pages of academic journals and doctoral dissertations… until now. Explosive advances in delivering low-cost, portable and high-quality VR to the masses has spawned a field called Medical VR. In this lecture, Dr. Spiegel will describe frontline stories of using VR in over 3000 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and will review his lab’s latest clinical research, including a recent randomized controlled trial testing VR in the hospital setting. The lecture will also review their new research using VR for blood pressure management, opioid reduction, and pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai. Two lucky registrants of this webinar will win free conference registrations to the 2019 Conference on Virtual Medicine. To learn more about this conference, please visit https://www.virtualmedicine.health/ Recording date: 2019

A recent survey of child life specialists revealed that 100 % use tablets in the workplace, yet less than half use them for therapeutic interventions or legacy building. This session will explore the benefits of digital art and will provide attendees the opportunity to practice using applications that can prove beneficial when working with patients and families. Recording date: 2017

How might integrative child life and creative arts therapy practices function within interdisciplinary care communities to best support the psychosocial vulnerability in siblings of patients facing heart transplant or other serious illness, hospitalization and bereavement? This presentation explores the art-and play-based clinical approaches behind “Bridging Interventions” to support family-and-sibling-centered care in pediatric critical care settings. Recording date: 2017