Procedural Support Reflection

Today, March 31, 2017, continued my second week in my rotation at Norton Women’s and Children’s Hospital. I became more familiar with the role of a child life specialist at Norton Women’s and Children’s Hospital, as well as observed and participated in patient interactions with great debriefing with Kristi. The child life service that I wish to highlight from today is urodynamics. I learned that urodynamic studies examine how well the bladder, urethra, and sphincters are able to store and release urine. Therefore, most urodynamic studies test the bladder’s ability to hold and empty urine. I was able to observe one preparation (by Taylor) and two procedural supports (one by Taylor and one by Kristi) in urodynamics today. One procedural support was with an 8-year-old female and one was with a 7 1/2-year-old male who had autism. The procedural support for this procedure was similar to a typical …show more content…
The preparation I observed was very brief with the 8-year-old female because the schedule had gotten thrown off and they had to have her procedure completed with by a specific time. I was able to see the best developmentally appropriate language to use when discussing urodynamics, such as using the words that children are most familiar with (i.e., pee, pee-pee, where we pee, rather than using technical/medical terms such as urine, which can be confusing and somewhat threatening to a child). I had a negative connotation of urodynamic studies, due to my prior practicum experiences (aka: stories from my practicum supervisors). However, the stories I had been told must be taken with a grain of salt because there was very limited preparation/education provided at my practicum site. I