Hospital Hoarding

Kathryn “Kat” Davitt, MOT, CCLS, OTR, has worked as a child life specialist at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas for over 25 years, and is also a licensed occupational therapist. Prior to her time at Cook Children’s, she worked as a child life assistant and child life specialist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and then as a child life specialist at Scott and White Memorial Hospital. At Cook Children’s, she has held positions as Child Life Clinical Coordinator and Community Program Manager, and she also helped to initiate and define the child life role within her past position working with the outpatient neurology, rheumatology, and palliative care clinics. She currently works on the inpatient Hematology and Oncology unit.
During her time at Cook Children’s, Kat has created two successful patient and sibling camp programs, and spearheaded the sibling support program. She is considered a system-wide resource for training on professional boundaries, and is a widely-respected student supervisor and staff preceptor, promoting professionalism and self-awareness as a facilitator of a clinical supervision group. She coordinated the student program for many years, and created a “Child Life 101” class in response to the many requests for career information received by her department. Kat took her classroom teaching skills all the way to Emmanuel University in Romania, where she taught the region’s first introductory child life course, leading to three Romanian students completing internships in the U.S. She was an early dog handler and has worked in partnership with Chanel for over 6 years.

Kat has been an active member of the child life professional community since the days of the Association for the Care of Children’s Health (ACCH). She has presented workshops at both child life and multidisciplinary conferences, and has been involved in child life conference planning and facilitation at the national and local level. She has published several articles, and co-authored the chapter on chronic illness and rehabilitation in the Handbook of Child Life (2009). Highlights of her involvement with CLC include participating in both parts of CLC’s Vision to Action conference (1996), serving as Secretary of the CLC Executive Board (2006-2008), participating in the first Job Analysis and Certification Exam preparation; chairing the Conference Planning Committee (2006); and serving on a wide variety of CLC committees over the years.