"Child Life Specialist" Interventions in Clinical Pediatric Care: A Systematic Review of the Effects on Mental Health Outcomes of Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Hospital stays can lead to psychological stress in children, which is often not sufficiently addressed in standard care. A new approach is to involve specialized psychosocial professionals, designated as Child Life Specialists (CLS), in clinical care in order to strengthen the child's perspective, to cushion burdens through targeted interventions and to promote the well-being of the patients. The aim of this work is to analyze the effects of CLS interventions on fear, pain and stress of children in a clinical context. A systematic literature search was performed in the databases Medline, Embase and PsycINFO. The results are presented in tabular and graphical form. Four randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were analyzed to investigate the effects of CLS interventions in 459 children aged 0-15 years. Significant improvement in each of the outcome criteria was reported in at least one study. All studies were expected to have a medium to high risk of bias. The included RCTs report positive effects of CLS interventions on outcome variables of mental health of children in the clinical setting. Due to the small number of studies and their heterogeneity and quality, further research is needed.