Conducting Research with Children and Parents in the Hospital: Challenges, Strategies, and Findings From a Study Evaluating the Role of Child Life Specialists

Dr. Amy Claridge is an associate professor in family and child life at Central Washington University and a licensed marriage and family therapist. She is the director of the Family and Child Life master's program at CWU and is engaged in child life research in collaboration with graduate students. She is the chair-elect of the ACLP Research Proposal Subcommittee.

My name is Lindsay Montgomery and I am currently a Certified Child Life Specialist at Seattle Children's Hospital. I have my undergraduate and graduate degrees from Central Washington University. I worked closely with the university to help create the first Child Life degree program in the northwest. Throughout my graduate degree, I taught courses for the university on a teaching assistantship and continued to teach as an adjunct instructor following graduation. I completed my thesis on the efficacy of child life services by collecting data from a nearby children’s hospital as the start of what is now a larger longitudinal study. Beginning at Seattle Children's as a per diem across all units, I then moved to my role in the Emergency Department before settling into my current home on the inpatient cancer care unit. I am passionate about balancing my love for patient care with my goals to explore empirically-based advances in child life services.