Child Life Wild Life
Jessica Lewin, CCLS & The Child Life Mentor, sits down with Certified Child Life Specialists, students, and professionals to talk about topics surrounding the field of child life. Come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills, protect your mental health, and glean inspiration, hope, and ideas. I'm so happy you're here!
Child Life Wild Life
The Wild Life of Year One as a CCLS with Cami Schafer
Certified Child Life Specialist, Jessica Lewin, talks with friend and first-year CCLS, Cami Schafer, about what her experience has been like during the first 6 months of working as a Certified Child Life Specialist.
In this episode, Cami bravely shares her journey, starting from her practicum, through her internship experiences, to her current position in a level one trauma center's emergency department. We delve into the challenges she faced during the pandemic, her fight against imposter syndrome, and her relentless prioritization of mental health.
Cami doesn't stop there, she shares the nitty-gritty details of her current position, offering us a unique peek into the reality of working in an emergency department. She reveals how she brought about a restructure of the child life department and prepared for her certification exam. Cami also enlightens us on the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance and creating a support system in her line of work, something every professional can learn from.
Whether you're an aspiring child life specialist or a professional in any field grappling with similar challenges, this episode is for you!
You can follow Cami on Instagram as @cami.schafer
Quiz For Learning Styles mentioned in the show: http://www.educationplanner.org/students/self-assessments/learning-styles-quiz.shtml
Track: Odessa — LiQWYD & Scandinavianz [Audio Library Release]Music provided by Audio Library PlusWatch: https://youtu.be/jNy-Dp3lgcgFree Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/odessa
I have found that this job is the first job I have had in my whole life where I have been able to just really, for the most part, like once I leave the hospital I am done with work. I try really hard to not check my email. I try really hard not to think about what has happened at work. So it's been really helpful for me to just kind of really focus on separating my life as a child life specialist and my life as Kami, a 26 year old who is still trying to become an adult.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast, a platform dedicated to sharing the honest ends and outs and vulnerable truths about the child life profession. With your host, jessica Luhann, come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills, protect your mental health and gain inspiration, hope and ideas from fellow certified child life specialists, students and professionals. And now here's your host, jessica Luhann.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast. Today, I have Kami Schaefer on the podcast to talk about her experience as a first time child life specialist. She has been a child life specialist now for seven months she started in January of 2023, and she's here today to talk to us about her journey, her practicum and internship experience that impacted her future as a child life specialist, how her certification exam went and tips for how to study, and then all the information about her current job, how she got there and how she's doing, how she's navigating imposter syndrome and prioritizing her mental health, and this is just a really great episode. So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Kami Schaefer about being a first time child life specialist. Hi, kami, thank you so much for being on the Child Life Wildlife Podcast. Hi, yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to deep dive into your experience, with this being your first time as a child life specialist, but I would love for us to take a little bit to learn a little bit more about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. My name is Kami. I am 26 years old. I live in the Midwest. Good old.
Speaker 2:Minnesota.
Speaker 1:I have been a child life specialist for seven months, so that is very exciting. I started pursuing child life back in 2016 when I was a sophomore in college. I wanted to do something in the healthcare field with kids but knew I was not cut out to be a doctor or a nurse or anything in that realm of like specific medical things, and my advisor had pointed me towards child life, and so ever since then, my life has been pursuing that career and I also run in my free time and I'm currently in the thick of wedding planning. Amazing, so very busy right now, but obviously done with all the student stuff, which is really great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's got to be such a relief to have that all off your plate. You do run a lot. You're running on Instagram in your stories all the time Amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I'm in a running club here in the Twin Cities and so it's really cool to do organized sports as an adult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. So tell me a little bit about your practicum and internship experiences and how do you feel like those impacted your future as a child life specialist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are a huge part of my journey of becoming a child life specialist. So I started applying for practicums when I was in my finishing my first year of grad school and I at first did not want to do a practicum. I didn't think it was needed or that it would be important in any way. And boy was I wrong. And it took a few times. Like a lot of people, it takes a few rounds of applications to get a practicum. It was also 2020.
Speaker 1:So pandemic time like the start of the pandemic, I got a practicum. It was 50 hours in Alabama, so I had to travel across the country. I was living in Wisconsin at the time with my family because COVID so that was a huge jump, but I really obviously, like was super passionate about becoming a child life specialist and it felt like a really cool opportunity to learn about child life in a completely different state and different part of the country. So, as difficult as that was to be there by myself, I rented an Airbnb. I knew absolutely no one, but it was such an amazing time and I felt like the staff were really helpful and it kind of like helped re-spark my passion for child life because I had been out of a hospital environment, done volunteering, for about two years. At that point, and since it was only 50 hours, I also decided to pursue a virtual practicum, which was also just an amazing experience because, while I have a lot of hands-on experience with kids, it helped me learn much more about the field of child life and the kind of child life specialists that I want to be. So both of those practicum experiences were absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:And then internship happened. It took four rounds of applying to internships for me to get an offer and it was probably one of the hardest periods of not only my pursuit of child life but in general one of the hardest experiences of my life, just because I applied to probably close to 20 hospitals every time and just getting rejected that much Not only cast a lot of doubt on you as a child life student, but it started that doubt started to creep into just like my life and who I was as a person. That was really hard and also like still in the pandemic at that point, and so not having enough experience, wanting to get experience, not being able to get that experience was really hard, and after the third time I thought about just being done and I started looking at other opportunities career wise, and then my lovely boyfriend at the time now fiance and my advisors really pushed me to apply like just one more time, and that was like the only chance I had left, because in my grad program I had one more time to apply.
Speaker 1:Otherwise I would have to like force graduate through a capstone project, which I did not want to do, so I was really nervous going into that last round applying, but there are a lot of really hard work. I actually got an offer at my dream my number one choice internship site. It was amazing because I got to go back home. I was living in Omaha at the time with my fiance and it was. It was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1:My internship advisor is a wonderful woman who really believed in me and it was really nice after all that rejection and like over a year of feeling that rejection, to feel like, ok, this is where I want to be and this is where I meant to be. So it was a really, really hard experience, but I think it just taught me of how much I wanted to be a Child Life Specialist and how hard I was willing to work for it.
Speaker 3:I want to go back to what you were saying about your practicum experience. You know, like not sure if you really wanted to do one, and I think practicums are like a hot topic right now in child life, because you don't have to do one and you've never had to do one, but it makes you more competitive on your resume. What about, especially with it being only 50 hours? What about that? In person experience made you go like, oh, I'm so glad I did this before my internship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, I think for me. I loved volunteering in college at a children's hospital, but I very rarely worked hands on with a Child Life Specialist or really rarely saw what they did every day, and so my practicum was kind of like a volunteer experience. But also I was just with the Child Life Specialist the whole time and I got to do everything that they were doing and I was like, OK, so I, if I were to have gone into an internship not having done this, I probably would have felt really overwhelmed, because you talk so much about child life and what you do in grad school, but being able to actually do a little bit of that hands on beforehand I think was super helpful. And so unless you have a volunteer experience that is really tailored to working with a Child Life Specialist or doing a lot of the daily work, then I think a practicum would be helpful for those students who don't have those experiences volunteering.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it sounds like even just that 50 hours was impactful for you. I know when I was the practicum coordinator we did 200 hour practicums and that I mean you truly were just with your Child Life Specialist for five weeks straight and I can't say enough good things about how that prepared so many future interns to feel confident, even just with like the lingo that you're hearing the Child Life Specialist say to doctors or nurses or families and you're like, oh, I should use that in an interview or you know things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It really helped to just kind of like also develop my elevator speech before going into my internship and so and being into completely different environments like one day a week I was on the bone marrow transplant unit and the other day of the week I was in one day surgery and so getting to see that full spectrum of everything was kind of like a crash course in like a day in the life of a child life specialist, but over like 50 hours.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so very cool. So how soon following your internship experience, did you sit for the certification exam?
Speaker 1:So I finished my internship back in December and I took the exam in March. I was just ready to be like ready to take the exam and ready to go, especially because I was starting my job in January.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, so you had already started your job and then, three months later, sat for the exam.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay. Do you have any tips or tricks for future child life specialists who are looking to take the exam?
Speaker 1:So I started off by just taking the practice exams over and over again and felt like I wasn't retaining a whole lot of information. But being involved in there's this Facebook group for aspiring child life specialists and they have like a huge Google Doc full of information that you can have access to. That was really helpful for me. And then, along with taking the practice exams, my fiance was like maybe you should try just like writing out the study guides. Maybe that would be really helpful. Some of the questions came up that were in those study guides and I was like, oh my gosh, I would not have remembered this had I not like, physically written it down once or twice while going through these study guides.
Speaker 1:So I think a combination of those practice exams will also just like word for word writing down everything in the study guides. That was really helpful for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that just reminded me of when I was working at the school. There was a student that was really struggling with with taking tests and like what she could do to be better at taking tests, and I had her take a little quiz. I'll put it in the show notes, but it helped you figure out if you're like a tactile learner or an auditory learner or what's the. What's the third one? It's like obviously like a written or like writing.
Speaker 1:I do know I'm talking about my tongue. Yes, yes, because I think there's three.
Speaker 3:But if you take that kind of quiz before you start studying for the certification exam, I think it'll just help you better study the way that you learn, you know. So yeah, moving into our next topic here of your current job now, where you're working as a first time child life specialist. What does that current position look like? How long have you been working there, and what does your day look like, with like hours, and did you ever imagine yourself in this unit? That's like so many questions for you, but I really just want to know everything about your current position.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I work in the emergency department of a level one trauma center. It's also a burn center. It's combination adult and pediatric, so it is a wild, wild, wild kind of environment. It is also a county hospital, a safety net hospital, so we take everyone and anyone, which I think is something that really drew me to that environment in the first place. I am the only child life specialist there in the emergency department there are two child life specialists that work in our very small Peds Ward in our PICU and then one burn child life specialist. So the burn child life specialist and I are both brand new to our positions and we have another position open in the emergency department that hasn't been filled yet but hopefully will be filled soon. I work 9 am to 5 pm, which is very odd for an emergency department child life specialist, but I really hope that going forward, as our department grows, we can have evening coverage and a lot of staff that aren't child life specialists are also advocating for that, which is amazing. And so there hasn't been a child life specialist in our emergency department for seven years. So as a new grad it was a little overwhelming to kind of take that step in helping rebuild that program. But I think that so much of my life up to this point has been figuring things out and advocating for myself and really helping build myself and my self-confidence, and so I really felt like it was going to be a good fit and that it is something that I was going to be able to do. Is that what I absolutely envisioned when I first started pursuing child life? No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:I wanted to work in hematology, oncology. I wanted to be at a standalone children's hospital. I had that big dream of working at a huge hospital with a huge child life department, and I had that opportunity during my internship and I absolutely loved it. So I worked at a summer camp for eight years and worked in the first-aid staff and a part of that we had to become first responders and going through that training I fell in love with the idea of being in an environment where you're constantly thinking on your feet. Everything is so fast-paced, every day is new and you just don't get that in a lot of inpatient settings. And then I also have worked in foster care and worked in AmeriCorps, and so, working with people who come from such like hard lives and who have absolutely nothing to give but themselves. I knew that working at a county hospital and the safety net hospital is where I wanted to be because I wanted to help those people. So that's how I ended up there and it is wild, we actually. So I toured there as an intern because the hospital is right down the street from where I did my internship and I knew from that day.
Speaker 1:It was like two weeks into my internship, I told myself this is where I'm going to work. And people are like are you sure? And I was like, yes, I'm absolutely sure. And like family and friends and people at my internship were like are you sure, Are you sure this is where you want to work as a new grad? And I was like, yep, I know, and my family knows I am very stubborn and when I set my mind to something, obviously it will come to fruition. And yeah, it's been amazing. It's been a really rewarding experience so far hard, but also very rewarding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you started this position? What was the January of 2023, right, yes, okay, and not having child life in that area for seven years with such a unit that already has a lot of turnover, I can't imagine there was a lot of people who even had child life experience in the ER. Was there a lot of people who still like, oh yeah, I'm familiar with that. Or was it a lot of people that you had to do education with and really explaining what your role is?
Speaker 1:There's a nurse who is kind of like a pseudo supervisor for me, who has been doing the child life thing-ish child life-ish for a long time because she saw the value in it and she worked with the child life specialists that had worked there previously, and so a lot of staff mostly the like attendings and doctors and like medical directors have an understanding of child life or have worked with child life in the past.
Speaker 1:There are two that come to mind specifically that were super passionate about getting child life back in their department and I love them and work very closely with them a lot of the time because they are high up enough where they can help push things forward if things aren't moving forward, in terms of getting certain materials or helping promote, like, water safety. We promoted water safety month and so they're very passionate about it and that's been amazing. I think in terms of nursing there's been a lot of turnover, but there are. Once you kind of like find your stick with one nurse, you see that nurse works a lot in that the area, because we have a PEDS specific area where we also see adult patients. But you kind of see that once they understand child life, a lot of those staff tend to come back to that side of the department.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say it's kind of a mix and I meet people new every day. We have new residents because we're a teaching hospital, but I really like being able to meet this like intern class of residents right when they start and introduce myself and kind of like get my in at that point, versus when I met all the other residents that were there. They had already been there for a year or two years and so I was a lot newer to the hospital than they were, and so it feels good to kind of like almost have a fresh start with some students as they're coming in summer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great. What does your support system look like? In the ER you said there's only two other child life specialists but otherwise you're kind of on your own so who either are part of the multidisciplinary team or is there somebody outside of the hospital that you lean on? What does your support system look like? Or your inner circle?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I, with the three other child life specialists in the hospital there's two inpatient, one in burn and then there's me. They are my support system for a lot of things that go on at work. I'm still trying to find a balance between finding connections in the emergency department staff and our pediatric staff, since they're two separate departments. I'm kind of like the middleman right now, and so even now that we're seven months in, I'm still trying to navigate that a little bit. There are nurses and other like residents and staff that I've really made some strong connections with.
Speaker 1:But outside of the hospital, my friends and family are some of my closest support. I have friends who are nurses at local hospitals and some friends who are in medical school. So being able to talk to those friends because they kind of like get it more than my fiancee, who is a chemist there's nothing about the medical field. So having those friends that are like-minded outside of my job has been really helpful. And then also I just recently joined this running club in the Twin Cities and they're like some of my greatest support system, like because I go to running club right after work some days, and so if.
Speaker 1:I'm having a really hard day to go there and like blow off some steam with my friends and like run and work it out and kind of have. That outlet has been huge in the last seven months because I did not have that before and so to have that specific aspect has also been really helpful.
Speaker 3:Are there any other ways that you feel like, especially being a first-year child-life specialist, that you and maybe it's not even things that you're currently doing, but you're like I really should start doing this? Is there things that you're doing to prioritize your mental health besides support from, like, friends and family or co-workers? How else are you prioritizing that?
Speaker 1:I have found that this job is the first job I have had in my whole life where I have been able to just really, for the most part, like once I leave the hospital, I am done with work. I try really hard to not check my email.
Speaker 1:I try really hard not to think about what has happened at work and we have like this private texting system that we use and I try not to look at that and I shut it off. And so it's been really helpful for me to just kind of really focus on separating my life as a child-life specialist and my life as Kami, a 26 year old who is still trying to become an adult, so really creating that separation, because I think that as a child-life student and when you're working so hard and spending so much time focusing on child life, it becomes like your identity and that I'm a child life specialist. I don't necessarily want that to be my identity anymore. That's not who I am, it's just part of who I am and part of the job that I do. So I think that has been really really helpful.
Speaker 3:That is such a healthy thing for a seven month child-life specialist to be feeling. I wish I would have deleted that stuff off of my phone Like I had no business looking at my email. What is important? You know that like I must read this at 10 o'clock at night before I go in at 8 o'clock. It's just not important. So good for you. That's amazing. So, with that being said, child life can be incredibly challenging from the moment you start as you go through the cycle of applying for internships and sitting for the exam. But being officially certified can bring about a lot of imposter syndrome. Can you talk a little bit about some highs and lows or growth moments that you've experienced from adjusting from student to professional?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I worked by butt off to be a child life specialist and so you kind of come out of the gate really confident, nervous, but like, really confident, in that you know what you're doing. I think what is unique about my position is that I am kind of like in a little bit of a no man's land, being in the emergency department of a hospital that also serves adult patients. So there are a lot of people who don't necessarily work with kids, like to work with kids, have experience with kids, and then there's me, and so I find myself since I'm the only child life specialist they work with that.
Speaker 1:If a procedure does not go well or something, does not someone rub someone else the wrong way. It kind of feels like a big failure Because I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing right and I don't know sometimes how to bounce back when things go wrong. I have really strong support from the other child life staff, but they are not in the emergency department with me. We have slightly different schedules. They have their own unit that is so busy, since we are a level one trauma center and it is trauma season in the summer, so we're all just kind of like trying to get by, and so I do feel a lot of that imposter syndrome on those days when I feel like I'm doing the right thing but there are people around me who just don't understand, and so it is a lot of kind of having to reteach with some staff and also becoming a lot more I don't know if confrontational is the right word but just kind of like putting my foot down in certain situations and being able to stand up for myself mainly, but also for patients and families in some situations.
Speaker 1:Like there are some times where I walk away and I'm like I don't know if I'm going to have a good relationship with that staff member again. But you know what I feel like what I did in that situation was right and I'm going to stick by my gut and reminding myself that not everyone is going to love me, not everyone is for child life in that type of environment, and that's OK, and they can work with the adult patients and they'll continue to work with Pete's patients when I'm not there, because I'm not there every day, 24 hours a day, and that's just kind of life. I'm not going to change everyone's life. It's a hard reality to kind of remind myself of when I started.
Speaker 3:For sure. What were some like highs of these last seven months? Was there anything that stands out as like this is the whole reason of why I got into child life, or like this is what I imagined child life was?
Speaker 1:Actually, last week there was a situation where I also go into our trauma bays when pediatric trauma is come in, which can be really overwhelming.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it's kind of like where staff can really see the work that I do and it was a very traumatic car accident with this patient who is just an absolute gem, and being able to help that patient feel even more calm and comfortable in the environment, and then also seeing how I could provide comfort to the parents and the family of that patient as well, and then hearing staff afterwards thanking me for being there and telling me how much they appreciate me being there.
Speaker 1:And even if those moments are far and few between right now because we are so busy with trauma season for both kids and adult patients, those are the moments that after a really hard week or after a really hard day, I'm like, ok, these people still appreciate me, these people still want me here, I still want to be here. Like I have never thought, even after like the worst day, that I would want to leave my job. I don't foresee myself wanting to leave anytime soon. If anything, it's just motivation to go back and keep reminding people that I'm not going anywhere. Like I need to remind myself this isn't an internship. There's no end date in sight.
Speaker 1:So, I need to just kind of get over situations that happen, that are hard and keep coming back and then and then. That is when those high moments do come and I do feel like I make a really strong connection with the patient or I hope to procedure go really smoothly, and so those moments when they do come, they are really sweet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a balance being like confident and comfortable during like crucial conversations with people. That like that's what came to mind when you were saying like those confrontational moments. I was like those are crucial conversations because they need to happen but they're uncomfortable. But when you can present those confidently and comfortably, it goes over so much better. And sometimes those people that you do have the crucial conversation with four or five or six months down the road, they're like your biggest advocates because you took the time, like to have that conversation. So that's very cool. I would love to go into my closing questions that I ask everyone. So the first question is if someone's listening today and they are really resonating with what you're saying about starting your first child life job, what's one tangible action step that they can take to get them on the right path as they manage this transition from student to professional?
Speaker 1:The first thing that came to my mind when I read this question, when you emailed it to me and you're asking it now, is to talk to a child life specialist.
Speaker 1:Talk to someone that you have not worked with or not haven't been a student with, someone that you just either find online or someone that you know from a local hospital in your area. That has really helped me all throughout my time as a student and now as a professional. It's just making those connections and having those relationships where you can ask questions and you can kind of find a mentor or even appear. There are still a lot of child life specialists in the area who went through the same grad school program that I did, and so it has been really helpful to not only have the older, more experienced child life specialists as mentors, but having child life specialists around me who are at the same point in school or in life, even just like the same, like the same life outside of child life. It's been really amazing to kind of make those friends and make those connections, so that's something that I have found to be my biggest tool when pursuing child life.
Speaker 3:The second question I have is I do have a lot of students that follow along and listen to this podcast, so what's one thing that you'd say to them as a tip for moving through this profession as a whole?
Speaker 1:Getting into the profession of being a child life specialist right now is really hard and I am a testament that if you work really hard, you can get there.
Speaker 1:After applying four times for internships, I really had to sit down and think about is this something that I really want to do?
Speaker 1:Is this something that I think will be my job for the rest of my life, or am I just in it for a little while? Because with how much work and time you have to put into the internship and school and getting a job, you really have to decide if it's something that you're going to be working for, especially after the pandemic and how much the field of being a child life student has changed. So really take the time to evaluate how hard you want to work for that and then also find support from other child life students, or my two grad school advisors were my biggest supporters and my biggest fans, so that was really helpful in just helping remind me that I am worth it and I have what it takes. I just needed to push and wait for the opportunity that the universe had planned for me and then it really paid off in the end and then I know that you are new in your child life experience as a child life specialist, but I still feel like you can answer this question.
Speaker 3:So if child life is a wild life, what has been the wildest part of your experience so far?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would have to say my practicum, the fact that I moved across the country my fiance and I drove for 15 hours to this Airbnb that I would be living in for eight weeks, by myself, in the middle of the pandemic. I knew absolutely no one. I got to the hospital on my first day and they were like oh, who are you staying with? Do you know? Do you have friends or family here? I was like no, I'm just staying in an Airbnb. I know nothing about the state, nothing about the city that I was in, but I think that just showed like how much I wanted it and how hard I was willing to work and how far I was willing to go physically, literally, how far I was willing to go to become a child life specialist. And so I look back at that time and I think about when I told my family and they were just like are you serious? I feel like I get that a lot with my child life profession.
Speaker 1:I feel like a lot of times people are like are you sure that's what you want to do? And I'm like, yep, and I do it anyways, and it turns out great, which I think for me personally has worked out really well, but it's a wild ride, so for sure.
Speaker 3:For sure, my goodness. Thank you, kami, so much for hopping on the podcast with me and talking a little bit about your experience. I know that it's going to resonate with the people that it's meant to, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me and for allowing me to share my story, because I know that there are other people out there who have struggled as much as I have or are currently in that struggle of pursuing child life, and I want them to know that it is worth it and you are worth it. You just have to really focus on selling yourself in the right way and really believing in yourself to get there.