Description:

According to the Association of Child Life Professionals “Emotional safety encompasses specialized strategies including atraumatic, patient- and family-centered, trauma-informed, culture-centered, and developmentally appropriate care. These clinical components are woven throughout the four pillars of emotional safety: (a) screening and assessment; (b) intervention; (c) environment; and (d) education, training, and communication.” Join Jenaya Gordon in a presentation that focuses on defining emotional safety, common reactions children and teens have to trauma, and lastly presents trauma-informed, emotionally safe tactics to use with injured patients.

Objectives: 

1. Define the definition of emotional safety as it applies to pediatrics
2. List common reactions children and teens have to trauma
3. Describe trauma-informed, emotionally safe tactics to use with injured patients

Jenaya Gordon is a Certified Child Life Specialist and is in the new role of Patient Emotional Safety Specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. She co-wrote the chapter “Trauma-Focused Medical Play” in the Handbook of Medical Play Therapy and Child Life, is co-author of the training manual Engage-Calm-Distract: Understanding and responding to children in crisis, and authored the paper Emotional Safety in Pediatrics. Jenaya created and taught a graduate course at the Erikson Institute, entitled Trauma-Informed Practice in Child Life.