Jami Barretta is a Child Life Specialist at Hassenfeld Children's Hospital. Her job is to help kids be kids in a hospital setting through play music and art therapy.
She chatted with Helen Little and Nina Del Rio about the importance of her job at our Hope For The Holidays Radiothon.
“The way in which we do our job there’s a lot of aspects to it. But, the most important thing is that we’re helping to reduce the stress and anxiety of the children and families experience in the hospital. It can be so traumatic and anxiety provoking to be in an environment that is so new and unfamiliar. To be able to give a patient and a family a positive experience I think is the most important part our job.”
She also mentioned. "The idea of being in such an unfamiliar environment, the struggle is losing that sense of control and choice when they're in the hospital.They're going through medical treatment that needs to be constantly done to them and they're not getting any choice or control over that. So as a Child Life Specialist that's really our job to give them the opportunity to have some of that control and choice back."
Click the video above to watch the full interview.