Poster Presentation: "When You Have a Person Who is There Just for You": Influence of Child Life Specialists on Patients' Future Career Development

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This poster presentation will explore the stories of child life graduate students and specialists whose own pediatric hospitalization experiences shaped their decisions to become child life specialists. Findings include why participants chose child life over other professions and how participants’ previous experiences with child life informed their approach to working with patients and families. Notably, participants described the challenge of maintaining boundaries with people who reminded them of their own experiences.

Learning Objectives:

Identify at least one way that the field of child life differentiates from other professions, as noted by study participants.

Describe how child life graduate students and specialists have made meaning from their prior hospitalization experiences.

Articulate the challenges of maintaining boundaries between one’s personal experiences and professional encounters.

1 PDU
Suggested Domain: Professional Responsibility

Lucy Adelson

Certified Child Life Specialist

Amanda Ginter, Ph.D

Certified Child Life Specialist

Towson University

Amanda Ginter, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Family Science. She teaches a number of theory and research-based courses. She is also the program director for the Family-Professional Collaboration graduate certificate.

Dr. Ginter began her research career studying how older mothers of breast cancer patients cope with their daughters’ illness. She has since led several research studies examining the impact of cancer survivorship on family relationships. Dr. Ginter uses qualitative and quantitative methodologies in her research.

From 2013 to 2014, Dr. Ginter was a faculty research associate with the University of Maryland Extension. In this role, she assisted the Health Insurance Literacy Initiative leaders and the University of Maryland Extension Director for Assessment and Evaluation in designing, collecting data, processing, and reporting for an evaluation program on Smart Choice Health Insurance.

Dr. Ginter is an active member in the American Psychosocial Oncology Society and the National Council on Family Relations.