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 Navigating Grief and Private Practice with Jessica Correnti
Certified Child Life Specialist, Jessica Lewin, talks with friend and CCLS, Jessica Correnti, about her personal experience with grief and how that has shaped her in her private practice providing support to grieving siblings and families.
With an extensive background in ICU settings and grief support, Jessica joins us to illuminate the intricacies of supporting children and families through some their darkest moments. Her narrative, woven from both personal heartache and professional triumphs, reveals the profound impact of community engagement for specialists in private practice and the delicate dance of offering solace to those in the midst of tragedy.
Embarking on a journey from the fast-paced environment of hospital work to the autonomy of private practice, Jessica offers us a candid look into the unique challenges and coping strategies honed over her 15-year career. She shares the stirring story of her own loss and the birth of an organization dedicated to bereaved families, as well as her progression into virtual counseling to reach those in need across distances.
As an author, she has written books including "The ABCs of Grief," and "Forever Connected"; both of these books demonstrate her commitment to aiding others in navigating the complexities of mourning, further highlighting the resilience of those she serves.
You can follow Jessica on Instagram as @kidsgriefsupport.
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really get to know your community, because that's how you're going to thrive as a private practice child life specialist. You need the community. There's no other way to really build a practice without getting out there and connecting with other individuals.
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 glean inspiration, hope and ideas from fellow certified child life specialists, students and professionals. And now here's your host, jessica Luhann.
Speaker 4:Hello and welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast. Today I have on Jessica Correnti. She has been a child life specialist for 15 years and has really had a wealth of experience, especially in ICU settings. She found her love and desire and passion for working with families who are grieving from some of her own personal experiences, which she'll get into throughout this episode, she's just found a desire to be a part of walking alongside these families when tragedy happens. She is an entrepreneur, she works in private practice, she writes books and we are just going to get into all of those things throughout this whole conversation.
Speaker 4:I am really excited for this episode. I know that this is going to be one that a lot of people are just eager to learn more from her. She has a great social media platform where she shares lots of great tools and information for students, specialists, parents really anybody looking to gather more information on how to help those who are grieving. So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Jessica Correnti on what grief looks like in the Child Life profession. Hi, jessica, thank you so much for being on the Child Life Wildlife Podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for this conversation about grief in child life. But before we really dive into that, I would love to take a second to get to know you a little bit and give you the floor to tell us who you are, how long you've been a child life specialist, fun facts or anything that you'd like me and my listeners to know about you.
Speaker 1:Sure, so my name is Jessica Correnti, I am in the Baltimore, maryland area and I have been a child life specialist for the last 15 years. And I am married. I have two young kids at home, an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, and I have been in private practice for a year and a half now. And I guess just a little background about me and I guess how I found child life, because I'm always so Fascinated by hearing others stories with how they find child life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, growing up I knew that I always wanted to be in the medical field and I was one of those kids that was super obsessed with all the medical shows. And this might be dating me a little bit, but I used to be totally obsessed with the show Trauma life in the ER. So I would sit down and watch that obsessively. All of my projects in elementary school were, you know, papers based on the concepts and like the medical phenomenons that I learned in that show. So, yeah, a little bit obsessed. But entering college I was on track to go to nursing school and Then also had this tug to really towards the education field. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:I decided to dip my foot into education and took an intro to education course. I think it was my sophomore year in college and during that course I had an amazing professor who heard my passions for these two fields and said have you ever heard of child life? And that night I went home, I did all my research and like knew right then and there that this was the path for me. So the perfect blend of my my two passions, mm-hmm. Between the medical field and teaching. Because I grew up Really from the time that I was 12 I was teaching kids to swim and just love that aspect of watching these kids that were so fearful of the water and Really scaffolding their skills to be confident swimmers and in gaining all those the skills. So that's in a nutshell how I got into the field and of course there's a lot more to where I've been in the last 15 years.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so let's dive into that. What units or departments or hats have you worn working as a child life specialist over those last 15 years?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, so many so I've worked in three different hospitals and Two of those hospitals were very big children's hospitals. In both of those hospitals I actually yeah In. In two out of the three hospitals that I worked in I worked in two different units, so I've been in a lot of different places. I Started my child life career in a cardiovascular intensive care unit. So you know clearly pretty big, intense situations.
Speaker 1:We would have some patients that were there with us for Months. We had a patient that was with us for over a year, so some Some pretty lengthy stays. So of course we had everything there, from recovering from surgery to just all kinds of symptoms related to their congenital heart defects from birth, all the way through the teen years, and the adult would come into our doors because they had a congenital heart defect. So that's where I spent the first four years of my career. And then I had the tug to move back home where my family is. I at the time was engaged and knew that I wanted to be close to family. I knew that eventually we would want to have children and I just really couldn't picture myself being away from family. So then I moved to a different children's hospital and from there I moved into another ICU and, and looking back, I'm not sure if it was actually the right move to go from one ICU Into another ICU.
Speaker 1:I think in my career I was a little bit burnt out in that ICU setting hindsight is 2020. We can look at that now and say, yeah, I probably was doing some things that you know we're really burning me out, but that was my path, and the beautiful thing about child life is that we we can, you know, move to a different hospital, we can move to a different unit and when things are no longer serving us whether it's a professional or personal need we can make that switch and that's exactly what I did. So I had this renewed view of the profession and a renewed headspace for myself and I Spent a year and a half in a general pick you when I moved back home and then I realized that it was time to do something a little bit less intense. So I then went into a outpatient surgery actually a general surgery area that had some outpatient and some inpatient surgeries, so it was Definitely a lighter load.
Speaker 1:We still saw very you know, pretty intense situations between Neurosurgery and cardiac surgery and you know all the big specialties. But I also had built-in Ear tubes and T&A's and things that, like you know, yes, it's a big scary thing for them, but I didn't go home with the weight of all of these big, heavy grief situations. So I just evolved and I Made that switch when I knew that it was the right time for for me and then from there I stayed there until my my now eight-year-old was I Guess he was he wasn't even one when I, when I stopped, I worked there all through pregnancy. I went through grad school in the the setting with with the surgery center, so I had a lot going on.
Speaker 1:So full-time, with full-time work in, you know, 6 am To 3 pm, then I would go to grad school. I did that full-time for two years and I was pregnant at the same time and with my story I was pregnant almost the whole two years because I went through multiple miscarriages during that time.
Speaker 1:So, looking back, I'm not really sure how I did it, but it was one, one foot in front of the next and just Made it work, and I think in some ways it was nice to have something to focus on through that time. So so I stayed there until my my son was was born, went back after maternity leave for a few months and realized this was not the right move for me and.
Speaker 1:Needed to be home more. So, again, making that switch when it was the right move for me personally and professionally. So for for six months I was not in the hospital setting At all. I didn't have a child life hat on at all, I was just full-time mom, mm-hmm, and that's where I needed to be at the time.
Speaker 1:I Found an opportunity coming up Good six months later for a PRN position and it's like perfect. This is a way for me to keep my foot in the door and do life things, use my adult brain for something, because, being a full-time mom, I felt like I was not using my, my adult brain for anything. Yeah, so it was a good balance to have, you know that, one, two days a week in the hospital and the rest of the time I was really focusing on my family and my my own needs. So those are, those are the different places that I've been. So a lot of different settings.
Speaker 1:I did go into a few different settings when I went into that PRN position. So that position was in the emergency room and inpatient area. It was a combined unit and then I also, after a little bit of time there, I Made that switch again into an outpatient surgery setting because it was. It was the time and place for me, professionally and personally, to have a lighter load again, because I was. I was going through some pretty big stuff at home and to needed to take the time and the space to really process that without having a heavy load at work as well as at home?
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely so. What caused you to make the decision to leave the hospital setting and start an independent path in private practice?
Speaker 1:The decision to go into private practice has so many different layers to it. Yeah, I'm going to go a step backwards a little bit. First because it didn't just happen overnight, even though on paper it might seem like it. Because if you asked me a couple years ago if I ever wanted to go into private practice, I would have flat out said nope, not my plan at all. I love that it exists, but it's not my thing. Yeah. But then things change. When I was about, you know, eight years into my child life career, I went through the several miscarriages that I talked about. I also went through a stillbirth as well, the death of my daughter Maggie, who was 22 weeks gestation. And when I went through that process of grieving, everything changed. You know. It changes every aspect of your life, personally, professionally. There were some areas within child life that I never wanted to step foot in again. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so with this experience, I knew that there were some areas in the hospital setting I didn't want to be in. But I also had this pull and this passion to help grieving families like my own. And so I started in nonprofit work, volunteering with this organization to provide support groups for bereaved parents, support groups for bereaved siblings, and with that experience I started a chapter for families to come into our center to help them feel supported after going through pregnancy and infant losses, so things like remembrance walks and memorial gatherings and these support groups, so a space in a place for people to really feel less alone in the process, because it can feel super lonely going through something like this. So, long story short, with that experience of helping to run this organization, I saw that there was this need and this gap. When I was doing, when I was leading these bereaved sibling groups, I would have parents constantly coming up to me saying you know how do I help support my child through this? These are kids that they never stepped foot into the hospital setting, they had a brother or sister die during pregnancy and never had the opportunity to meet them or maybe it happened before they were even born and I just really saw that there was a missing resource and a gap and I felt really pulled to help fill this gap. So that's one of the reasons that I went into private practice is to help fill this gap with supporting grieving children, and that is the sole focus of my private practice is supporting grieving children, and it all kind of started with publishing my book.
Speaker 1:I wrote a book, again based on the needs that I was seeing from my bereaved sibling group and the themes that kept coming up.
Speaker 1:There wasn't a book that I could find that addressed this theme, so I created it and, with being a self published author, I needed to create a business entity for myself.
Speaker 1:Created that and I had you know, at the same time, these parents continually coming up, wanting essentially, consultations for the major things going on in their house, and so I thought you know, this is the end of 2021.
Speaker 1:I thought, well, you know, if I'm already creating this business entity, I'll just like create a private practice too, and then they can come to me, we can book sessions. And then that quickly evolved from well, if I'm doing sessions for parents, I ethically feel like I need to also have sessions for children, because that's where you know the real support is going to happen is working one on one with the kids. So when I started my business, I realized very quickly that I wanted to incorporate this private practice in it as well. So it all happened organically and some of things seem like they maybe happened kind of quickly, but there were so many different things building up to that decision that made it seem like a natural fit and, you know, just a resource that really needed to be here, because there's not a lot of support for these children that are grieving outside of the hospital setting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm super inspired by people who see a gap and go, oh well, it's not there, so I'll just do it Like I love that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and there's a huge gap. I mean, one in 12 kids will go through the death of a parent or sibling before they turn 18. And if you look at the map of where the resources are, where the grief centers are, where the supportive services are, there's wide open. Some states have not. So I wanted to be able to provide support, and one of the things I do in my private practices have virtual sessions so that those that live in a state that don't have services they can seek me out and have support.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you definitely have this deep passion for grief work, and I would love to know what drew you towards supporting grieving children and how did you know that this was a good fit for you.
Speaker 1:So I've always felt really called to working with grieving families as a Child Life Intern. I found that the ICU was really where I thrived and my rotation beforehand I would not say the same thing it was a general impatient piece rotation and I was questioning myself, thinking, am I really cut out for this work? And I had one of those moments where I had to sit down heart to heart with my Child Life Internship Supervisor and I realized that that just was not my area. That's not where I felt like I was thriving and I really realized that I needed that high intensity of the ICU. I needed that like I need you right now. This situation is happening, there's no time to wait, I need you here.
Speaker 1:So I am naturally kind of a quiet, calm presence and I really thrive in that high intensity space. So while this felt like a calling early in my career, I also felt like I needed a break from it at times too. So when my daughter died, I needed to take a few years away from that space to process, to heal, to recover, and then, once I was able to get out of that raw state, then I could go back into that work and it was something that I felt was healing and something that just lights me up and I feel like the shift from when I did grief work beforehand in the ICU setting and the grief work that I do now. It feels very, very different. So in my ICU days I carried things home with me. I did, I took things very. I felt things very deeply. When a patient died I would be at home on the floor stopping mess. Now you know, having my own grief experiences that hit as close as they can, I don't feel that weight coming home with me. Am I sad? Of course Do.
Speaker 1:I sit there with them and, you know, support them through it Absolutely. But it's not the same because it's that weight is no longer there dragging me down. So I think that's one of the things that I realized. You know, this is a good fit for me now. It lights me up to help these families cope with these really difficult events, and I'm not carrying it home with me either. So there's, you know, that difference in what things feel like now versus, you know, 10 years ago, when I was working in the ICU.
Speaker 4:What would you say are some important skills or traits to possess in order to be successful in this work of working with grieving families and children?
Speaker 1:I think one of the biggest things is the ability to be a companion. I think that's really like the utmost important skill. So if you haven't heard of him, look up Dr Alan Wolfeld. He talks about this in great length, has a number of great books about this too, but he really talks about how, you know, grief is not something that we are going to fix. It's not something we're not going to take anybody's pain away.
Speaker 1:But our job as a companion is to really sit with these children and families right where they are, walk alongside them. We're not trying to make things better or make them see the bright side or have like the perfect thing to say, because there's not a perfect thing to say. We are there to just walk alongside them and sit with them with it. So I think that's the one that like really is like top of the list. For me is just the ability to be a companion and to take those that checklist and that expectation out of it. And then you know really some other skills. I'd say self-care. It's kind of cliche to say it, but I think self-care is something that's really important. Ongoing education, because grief concepts and theories they're always evolving.
Speaker 1:The things that we learned about grief 15, 20 years ago. People today would look at those and be like, I'm not so sure I agree with that anymore. So that constant, continual education is really important. And then, lastly, I would say that good clinical supervision is something that is a must when working really anywhere in child life, but absolutely with grief situations, because they can get heavy and complicated and we want to have space to process these situations. So I'd say those are like my top three of different skills and traits that would be really important to possess.
Speaker 4:Yeah, definitely. I know there's no typical day in child life, but if we had to say what are some routines or things that you can count on happening throughout a given day for you, what does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yes, that is definitely true, there is never a day that looks exactly the same, which is one of the things that drew me to child life. So for me, I have a couple of different branches within my child life practice. So I have my one-on-one clients and with my practice specifically, I have some clients that I see virtually, I have some that I see in their homes and I have some that come see me in the office setting. So in any one day I could be in multiple different places.
Speaker 1:So, it gets a little wild sometimes, which I actually like, and I also with those virtual clients. I have clients sometimes in totally different time zones too, so that adds to a little bit of the chaoticness, but again, I love it. I love a crazy environment. So my day-to-day is seeing those clients in one of those type of settings and there is so much behind the scene that comes into play with private practice, including a lot of non-billable hours which I think sometimes we just don't think about it.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're running a business, running a private practice, so there's the marketing, the social media content, connecting with other professionals within the area and networking and the finances and of course, charting. We all have charting, no matter where we are. So there's that and creating goals for sessions and plans for sessions and of course there's purchasing and organizing supplies like we would in any area. So there's a lot of things that take place behind the scenes that people just might not even think about. So there's that.
Speaker 1:And then I spend a good bit of time on my own books that I am publishing and helping others with editing their books too. That's one of the things that I have worked into my private practice and that's the beauty of private practices. We can shape our schedules and focus on what we're passionate about, so it doesn't have to be anyone. This is what a private practice looks like and it's sample cookie cutter, and I think that's actually the hesitation that I had years down. Years before that I was like, oh no, that's never something that I wanna do, because I think I had this cookie cutter image of what this looks like but it has to be that way.
Speaker 1:It can be whatever you're passionate about, and going from there.
Speaker 4:I would love to go back. You just briefly mentioned it in your typical day, but you said you set aside some time to write your books. Can you tell us a little bit more about what those books are?
Speaker 1:Sure. So my first book is called Forever Connected and it was published a year ago today. Today is August 9th, so you're probably listening to this way later than that, yeah, but that's okay. So I just hit my first birthday with that book. So it's a very niche book.
Speaker 1:But these bereaved siblings they don't have a lot of books that really directly speak to what they are going through. So my book really focuses on following a few different children through their grief experiences and these conversations that they're having with their caregivers. These really real conversations. And all of these conversations came directly from stories within my bereaved sibling group. So these are real stories all a little bit, especially to keep that confidentiality, but these conversations that the caregivers are having, the children are having with their caregivers, are helping to clear up misconceptions that they have around the death of a brother or sister. And at the same time there is this theme throughout the whole book of continuing bonds, which is probably my most favorite grief theory. So this beautiful way of showing that these children, though their brother or sister is not physically present, they always have that love and that connection with their brother or sister who has died.
Speaker 1:So that is my first book and then I have written three more books. It's a series of books that have all gone through the professional editing process and I am currently working on wrapping up the very first book. It's called the ABCs of grief, so late 2023, that should be out for everybody to purchase and it's just a huge passion project of mine. And this book goes through every letter of the alphabet and it really breaks down grief. It's. Grief is a huge, very complex, complicated word. When you really think about it, like what is that all about? I've had so many clients say what is grief, and this will really break it down what grief feels like, what grief looks like, these experiences that come up in grief that we all have to navigate. So it takes some of the big concepts of grief and breaks it down into a way that children can understand and connect with and feel validated.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's great. How do families respond to coming to see you without you being like a social worker or a counselor, and is there any hesitation with like you don't take, I'm assuming you don't take insurance. No, I don't take insurance.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So what does that look like for families?
Speaker 1:So I think it's a bit of education at first, just like we would be doing in the hospital setting or really any other setting, because not many people know what a child life specialist is. So there's a conversation, as well as in my paperwork I laid out I am not a therapist, I do not diagnose, I do not treat mental health condition. So it's laying it all out. So it's very clear what families are coming to you for and making sure that those boundaries and services are clearly described and making sure that I, as a professional and as a child life specialist, I'm staying in my scope of practice.
Speaker 1:So that's definitely hugely important and I always would recommend child life specialists that are thinking of private practice to really spend time in the hospital setting first to really make sure that they know what is my scope of practice, what are those boundaries, and working alongside with other professionals can really help to shape that and to help that become a little bit more firm. And there are some gray areas, for sure, so those can be tricky to navigate, but I am always very willing to refer people off once it is no longer in my scope of practice. Yeah, and then as far as the insurance piece, that again, I'm very upfront with that. I don't accept insurance. I do have some families that pay with like an HSA card or an FSA card and that has worked for them. So that sometimes is helpful for families, but yeah, that's how that goes.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't even think that you could use an HSA card or something like this, but you're right. There is depending on what your insurance offers for your HSA. This could definitely be something that would be a part of it. Cool, Can you talk a little bit specifically about what some interventions are that you've done in private practice?
Speaker 1:Sure, so lots of different types of things. I am a huge advocate of using books that's definitely a big passion of mine, so I do a lot of bibliotherapy. We play a lot of games, which you might think like these virtual sessions. How in the world are you going to play a game? So there are a number of different ways that you can do that. So there are some games that we play computer based, virtually. I also have a way to. I have a separate camera, a second camera that I use for sessions where I can have almost like a projector style of a board game laid out on a table in front of me and we can move pieces.
Speaker 1:I've played an emotions memory game before. That has been super fun. I have one client that like every single time he's like where are the emotion cards? Are we playing memory? Like loves it? Yeah. So you know there's a lot that we can actually do in that virtual setting.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, bringing in art activities and therapeutic play to help kids process these big experiences that they've been through. And you know things like the other day I took I had a client bring some aluminum foil to the session and had them create, roll and make little balls and create a shape of what things were like for them Before the death of their sibling and what things were like for them after. And you know, it's just so profound to see. You know, this child had this larger than life person in his before and the after was gosh, I want to say like a 20th of the size. And then they drew a little person inside of this little box and I asked them about that and they said well, that's what I felt like. Afterwards I felt I was like all boxed up, I was caged up. My world felt so much smaller afterwards. And it's these super simple supplies that people have at home. I mean we used. We used some markers and some aluminum foil.
Speaker 1:That's it and we create this hugely powerful activity with something that we have at home. So I think that's one of the things that, like, we think that we have to have like the wildest toys and like everything under the sun, and we don't. We just need to have an open space for kids to. You know, it might be just a prompt and a couple of supplies and they will take it to really profound places. So, yeah, it's really incredible watching kids process things, and it's just such a privilege to be able to walk alongside these children going through just the most gut-wrenching experiences. And then I'll also add I always like to close with some sort of like mindfulness. So it might be some breathing exercises, it might be something to help ground them, it might be a short, you know, child-friendly meditation, so something that's like a tangible takeaway that they can then utilize in times of, like really big emotions that they're feeling. So that's another thing that I always like to incorporate into my sessions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's awesome. I've just recently discovered the power of mindfulness and I love that. Yeah, okay, I think we are ready to head into the last closing questions that I ask everyone. This conversation has been really great. Thank you so much for your vulnerability throughout all of it. The first question I have is if someone's listening today and really resonating with what you're saying about working in private practice, what's one tangible action step that they could take to get them on the right path?
Speaker 1:I think probably the biggest thing is really networking with your community.
Speaker 2:Get to know.
Speaker 1:You know other professionals in your area, whether that is social workers or professionals in the school setting or pediatrician offices. So, like, really get to know your community, because that's how you're going to thrive as a private practice child life specialist. You need the community. There's no other way to really build a practice without getting out there and connecting with other individuals. So that would be my main suggestion for somebody who is thinking about going into private practice.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's great. I do have a lot of students that follow along and listen to this podcast, so what is one thing that you'd say to them as a tip for moving through this profession as a whole?
Speaker 1:So I would say the biggest tip is just commit to being a lifelong learner and this can be both like the formal and the informal learning, but just keep learning, learn from your patients, your coworkers, students that you have over time, just that own like critical thinking and processing your experiences and just try new things, I mean, even if you fail at first. I'm terrified of failing and at the same time I also have gotten really comfortable doing uncomfortable things and there's just such growth that can happen through the things that are hard and you know, just keep going, keep adapting and keep learning.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I almost feel like that's kind of a prerequisite for a child. Life is like you have to at some point be comfortable with uncomfortable things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, because there's a lot of them. There's a lot of very uncomfortable things that happen as a child life specialist.
Speaker 4:The last question I have is, if child life is a wildlife, what has been the wildest part of your experience so far?
Speaker 1:So I have two that come to mind with this question right off the bat. I'm sure there are many, many more that I could list out if we had hours of time, but the two that come straight to mind. One was when I was working in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit and we had this absolutely amazing attending physician within our heart transplant program. That really understood child life, like what we were there for, and shortly after I started this position he asked if I wanted to observe a heart transplant surgery. It's like yes, yes, please. So I had to kind of be on call for whenever it happened, and these things don't usually happen during working hours. Yeah, so I worked my shift. At the end of the shift I knew that it was a possibility that one of my patients could be going in for a heart transplant and was basically kind of put on call. Stay by your phone, we might call you and let you know. Come into the, or. Yeah, so I got the call at 10 PM.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh To head to the OR and I got there pretty much as soon as the organ got there in the cooler and walked in and I see the child's old heart out on the table like still beating oh my gosh, because it's the electrical impulses and then watch them put this new heart and it, oh my gosh, it was the most wild, coolest thing that I have ever seen and it's just incredible, like some of the situations that we're able to witness and be a part of.
Speaker 1:And it's obviously not lost on me that this was obviously the one of the absolute worst days for this other family that said, yes, I will donate my child's organs to help take another child. So that's always in the back of my mind too. So I just had to say that too, because I know that this is one family's best day and the other family's worst day and there's space for both of those things. To be true, that was the first that comes to mind, and the other that came to mind is one of the hospitals that I worked at either during the pandemic or right after the pandemic. I think it was during. So everything's already wild anyways. But our hospital was hacked and our whole technology system went down, literally everything Internet, phones, fax machine, tubing system down, computers down, internet down. Literally everything.
Speaker 1:So we as a unit and as a hospital had to act fast and come up with a plan to help serve our patients, because you need things to be running to run a hospital. So we had jobs designated. We had people that were quote unquote. They were runners, that was their job for the day. So they run up to the pharmacy to say here are the orders, or somebody to run and pick up the medications, and we did everything by paper. So I had to figure out how to do paper charting for the first time in my career. This was 13 years into my child life career and I've never at this point written a paper chart, but I had to figure it out real quick. So that was very wild.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A wild experience.
Speaker 4:That's like a Grey's Anatomy episode or something that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was wild and it took a really long time to get it back. We had a good month of that.
Speaker 4:Oh my gosh, I was going to ask how soon it came back on thinking a day or two a month.
Speaker 1:That lasted a month, yes. Wow. My hand was very tired after every shift, like writing all those notes Like, wow, too old, too old, to be honest.
Speaker 4:Oh my goodness. Thank you so much, jessica, for agreeing to be on the podcast. I really really, like I said, appreciate just your wisdom and your vulnerability that you brought to this episode.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.