25 years of play, healing and hope: How St. Alexius’ Child Life internship reshaped pediatric caregiving

For 25 years, the Child Life internship program at Ascension St. Alexius Women & Children’s Hospital in Hoffman Estates has been paving career paths in a service integral to most pediatric departments.

Still, many remain unfamiliar with the service that’s affected even those who ultimately became specialists upon learning of the opportunity.

Katie Hammerberg, the Child Life coordinator at the hospital, not only founded the department itself in 1988 but the internship program in 2000. Since then, 64 students have been trained, including one of her longtime colleagues.

While the interns have come from and returned to many areas of the country, some of their local destinations have been Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, and Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

“One of our recent students started a Child Life program for the Cancer Wellness Center in Northbrook,” Hammerberg said.

These specialists provide support and advocacy to children and their families during their stays, helping lessen their stress and coping with their diagnoses, procedures and medically affected lifestyles.

This often takes the form of therapeutic play, and can involve educational and cooperative games as well as just listening.

“Our position is that play isn’t an option, it’s a necessity,” Hammerberg said.

Though the roots of the Child Life concept may date back a century, her early years at St. Alexius were ones of building understanding and acceptance among her medical colleagues. The Chicago native had found her own internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in 1987 after having graduated from college as a psychology major.

“When I arrived, no one knew about Child Life here,” she said of her own 37-year professional journey. “It’s been an incredible ride.”

By 2000, the department was well enough established to host an internship program aimed at preparing others for wherever they go.

Leticia Alvarado of Elgin undertook the internship in 2002 and received a permanent job offer at the end. She was persuaded that the career better fit her when she heard Hammerberg speak about it during her third year as an accounting major at Northern Illinois University.

“I do not regret my change at all,” Alvarado said.

Current intern Tatum Reddy of Bourbonnais was only at the beginning of her second year of college when learning about Child Life solved her dilemma of going into either teaching or nursing. She graduated from Olivet Nazarene University in May and the internship is building rapidly on her classroom learning and prior volunteering.

“I had no idea what Child Life was,” she said of her early college mindset. “I wanted the medical side of life but I wanted to work with kids. This is the perfect thing for all my desires.”

Hammerberg said one of the biggest changes between her training and Reddy’s is that today’s students are learning more about prepping children for procedures.

Alvarado added that many skills today’s specialists learned on the job are now being taught up front. But just as she often assists in the emergency room, medical staff there have also been trained in some of what she does to help comfort children who arrive in the middle of the night.

Last week, Hammerberg and Reddy collaborated comforting the nerves of 9-year-old Juan Morales as he painted a picture in the hospital’s family room with his mother during a break from his treatment.

Juan said he still disliked the needles he’d encountered during his stay but had fun with the games and Legos he found in the hospital.

His mother, Jocelyn Beltran of Addison, said both the hospital stay and the support of Child Life were new to her and Juan.

“It’s cool,” she said. “It’s nice. He’s not happy with the needles but with everything else he’s fine.”

Alvarado explained how specialists gently introduce the children to the equipment they’ll be encountering, and that the most frequent phrase they hear is, “That wasn’t so bad.”

Among the ways they build peace of mind is by prohibiting medical interventions from taking place in either the play rooms or the teen lounge. The young patients have to know there’s a safe space in the building where they’re truly free of such obligations, Hammerberg said.

With retirement hovering on the horizon, Hammerberg added that one of the final challenges of her career in a field that’s seen such great change will be passing the torch of leadership to the generation of specialists she’s done so much to prepare.

“I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish here,” she said.