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

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