{"id":9695,"date":"2023-10-23T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T05:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/uncategorized\/meenu-helps-kids-anxiety"},"modified":"2023-10-23T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T05:36:08","slug":"meenu-helps-kids-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/news\/meenu-helps-kids-anxiety","title":{"rendered":"Child life therapist helps kids manage anxiety in hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-builder-row-1 nonhundred-percent-fullwidth non-hundred-percent-height-scrolling\" style=\"--awb-border-radius-top-left:0px;--awb-border-radius-top-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-right:0px;--awb-border-radius-bottom-left:0px;--awb-flex-wrap:wrap;\" ><div class=\"fusion-builder-row fusion-row\"><div class=\"fusion-layout-column fusion_builder_column fusion-builder-column-0 fusion_builder_column_1_1 1_1 fusion-one-full fusion-column-first fusion-column-last\" style=\"--awb-bg-size:cover;\"><div class=\"fusion-column-wrapper fusion-flex-column-wrapper-legacy\"><div class=\"fusion-text fusion-text-1\"><h1>Child life therapist helps kids manage anxiety in hospital<\/h1>\n<div id=\"attachment_9696\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9696\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9696 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist.jpg\" alt=\"Child Life Therapist Meenu Wadhwa\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist-225x150.jpg 225w, https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist-400x267.jpg 400w, https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/10\/meenu-child-life-therapist.jpg 600w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 600px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 600\/400;\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-9696\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Child Life Therapist Meenu Wadhwa<\/p><\/div>\n<h4>Playing, breathing exercises, and breaking down complex health information are all part of the job for The Prince Charles Hospital\u2019s child life therapist, Meenu Wadhwa.<\/h4>\n<p>Meenu\u2019s role is to minimise the stress, fear and anxiety hospitalised children might experience and improve their coping strategies, which not only benefit young patients and their families, but also their treating teams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe hospital environment is quite unfamiliar to children,\u201d Meenu said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen they come here, they don\u2019t know what to expect or what\u2019s going to happen, and so they have that fear of the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meenu also helps to prepare children for medical procedures by explaining the process in an age-appropriate way. This helps to reduce the fear of the unknown and clarify misconceptions they may have.<\/p>\n<p>Meenu uses play-based activities, positive distraction and controlled breathing techniques to help ease the worries of some of the hospital\u2019s littlest patients and improve their ability to manage pain, reducing their need for sedation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes, if they\u2019ve had a traumatic experience in the past, that raises their anxiety,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they are too anxious, their ability to process information goes away \u2013 so the first step is to reduce that stress and anxiety and then prove information appropriate for their developmental level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now a permanent role, the child life therapist position was originally introduced as a trial in July 2022 in the TPCH emergency department. It was funded by The Common Good and Curing Homesickness through the sales of Coles Mum\u2019s Sause.<\/p>\n<\/div><div class=\"fusion-clearfix\"><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Playing, breathing exercises, and breaking down complex health information are all part of the job for The Prince Charles Hospital\u2019s child life therapist, Meenu Wadhwa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":9696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1468,1470],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-tpch","category-staff-profiles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9697,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9695\/revisions\/9697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metronorth.health.qld.gov.au\/tpch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}