How have things changed for you in your work with children and families during the COVID pandemic of 2020? 👍

 How have things changed for you in your work with children and families during the COVID pandemic of 2020?

June:

A:  Absolutely, yeah, I worked. I actually worked all throughout the pregnancy. I was off for about six weeks, kind of when things started, because they weren't they weren't really sure what to pregnant women. So they're like, yeah, you can stay over for a little bit. But then after they're like, you know, it's time you got to come back. So I worked from out all of April. I went back in May and then I worked all through up until I delivered. I delivered two weeks early, actually.

So I was there. And it definitely everything was harder. It's the biggest thing starting as we all started wearing masks so kids couldn't see our faces, which is awful nervous and absolutely. So it was just so forth, like you can't even it's hard. They couldn't even see us smiling. So it's like someone's coming in. I would always try to do with my eyes like, oh, so they knew. But I mean, it's scary.

Another big thing we blow bubbles a lot in our unit is super distraction tool for toddlers, even like three, four. Even school age kids sometimes love it. We were no longer allowed to use bubbles or pinwheels for helping them through their breathing. Yeah, because we couldn't we couldn't take our masks off and it couldn't be anything that we were blowing.

The kids were encouraged to keep their masks on, which is hard for a lot of kids. And their parents came home and he absolutely so under two they didn't have to but two and over, we had asked that they do. A lot of our kids didn't.

And then the biggest thing was when our kids fall asleep under anesthesia, they go to an induction room and one parent is allowed to go with them. And some of our anesthesiologists decided, well, I think the department decided that parents could no longer go back into that room because it was too many people because of covid, which caused.

A huge I mean, for I think I saw it more than anybody else, but it really it's hard it's hard to tell a kid that they can't have their parent, especially for our kids who had maybe a little bit higher needs coming in. Some anaesthesiologist were very flexible and they would kind of let it happen.

Some of our older kids, they would kind of give up premed in their ivy before they took them so that they didn't really know what was going on. But for our young kids are like toddlers and infants, it was sometimes taking the kids away from their parents screaming. And it's hard to explain to a two year old why we're doing that. So that, I think, was the most difficult thing for me to navigate and for our kids and families, too. I mean, no parent wants to do what they're done, nervous to begin with and then to kind of like watch their kid be ripped away from them as they're screaming down the hall.

That was the biggest thing, social distancing, trying to stay away from people. And a lot of what we do like getting down on kids levels and like kind of getting close to them. And we had to be a little bit more mindful of that. So it was just a little it's harder to connect when you have a mask on and you can't get super close and you can't use the things that kids. You know, that help kids like bubbles or pinwheels.  So it was tough. It was really tough.

Shayla:

A:  I wouldn't say it's changed with covid, I think it's changed a lot as I've grown more. I've been practicing now for a year and a half and I definitely think that it's changed a lot since starting out as a child life specialist.  I've learned to adapt my introduction of services quite a bit, especially in an environment. It's fast paced, there's a lot of moving parts, sometimes I don't introduce services until the entire medical workup is done because I go in, we're replacing a line, we're drawing labs.

We could be straight carrying a baby. We could be doing a lumbar puncture and. I got to go, I got to make stuff to do out what's best. Yeah, and not to say that I'm going into rooms and not saying like, oh, I'm Sarah, but not really going into tons of detail of what I am until afterwards, just because sometimes there's not the time and. That was a weird transition going from an intern, because I did not intern. I didn't do my internship in the IB, so.

Moving into the ED, where the environment is very different than like an inpatient setting and then also learning to adapt. How I interview services based off what that kid's there for, you know, if it's a newly diagnosed diabetic that's going to be admitted, my introduction of services is going to look really different for them than the kid that we're placing a cast on. And they're going home right now. Yeah.

And so just trying to you what is best for myself, like what are my goals?

One of my main key points that I want this family to understand about child life before I go into the room that's going to best serve them on a more long term basis if they need life on a more long term basis. 

I have talked about this before in some of my other posts but out of everything that I learned this questions continues to jump out at me.  It is just fascinating to me how drastically different these two responses are.  My interview with June talks about how her patients are no longer able to blow bubbles and she has to adapt her play to the social distancing guidelines.   Meghan, who works for the same hospital as June, talks about the changes in programs offered to patients and families within the hospital due to COVID-19.  Meghan talks about actors and comedians coming into the hospital to put on shows for the kids as well as workshops set up through the hospital with activities.  Those things have all changed.  On the other hand, Shayla who coming from a lower income hospital does not even talk about how COVID has changed her position as a Child Life Specialist.  Looking back at this interview question, I wonder if Shayla's hospital has any of those activities and programs at all because of their economic standings.