Any parent who has brought their child to a vaccine appointment knows the stress it can cause everyone in the room, from the kid who’s terrified of needles to the busy nurse trying to work on a wiggling body.
Certified child life specialists like Caitlin McGonagle ’13, who works at Children’s Hospital Colorado, can help ease the situation.
“Our job is to minimize immediate and long-term effects of stress, anxiety, and psychosocial trauma for children and their families,” says McGonagle, who has been at the Aurora hospital for almost seven years. “I provide preparation for procedures, as well as education related to the medical environment and different experiences children and their families will have.”
There’s a fun side of McGonagle’s job too. In her “distraction bag,” McGonagle’s tools include stress balls, fidget toys, dinosaurs, and light spinners. “I’ll introduce some sort of play and then talk about the reason we’re there and the hard thing we have to do,” she says.
McGonagle will pull out a teddy bear to show how a tourniquet works or provide a pinwheel so the patient can practice deep breaths. “We talk about a coping plan, and during the procedure, we implement that coping plan,” she says.
When the child follows the plan, it makes it easier for the staff. “The medical staff’s job is to complete the procedure,” McGonagle says. “Behavior management and preparation can take away from the focus on their work, so we’re there to provide support to the medical staff to enable them to do their job successfully and efficiently.”
Sometimes, a child’s anxiety and hesitation build up before they even enter the facility. In those cases, McGonagle makes a preparation booklet that includes pictures of the rooms and the steps of the visit. It also suggests bringing comfort items, like a favorite stuffed animal or blanket.
The child life specialist career became known to McGonagle when she was a Colgate student working at a Colorado summer camp for burn survivors. She was a horseback-riding counselor, but learned about the various medical staff roles at the camp. “I’d always been interested in working with kids,” says McGonagle, who minored in educational studies and was considering working in a school setting.
After being introduced to the child life specialist profession, McGonagle began a second bachelor’s degree, in human development and family studies with a focus on child life, at Colorado State University. A 600-hour clinical internship and certification exam were her final hurdles before starting her career.
At Children’s Hospital Colorado, McGonagle works in its outpatient clinics, from primary care to audiology to orthopedics. No matter the setting, her job requires her to develop rapport with
the patient and family quickly. “It can be challenging to, in such a short amount of time, make sure we are providing a safe space for patients and families to get through these hard things,” she says.
But when it goes smoothly, it can help that patient not only through the current procedure but also in how they think about future visits. “Needle fear is a huge problem,” McGonagle says. “I don’t want fear of getting a poke at the doctor’s office to be a barrier to accessing health care for kids and their families.”
Explaining things on their level and helping children have some control of their experience are small measures that can have a lasting effect.