Back in my day…..
Ok, saying things like that makes me feel old. But, when I was going through the certification process, believe it or not, there were even fewer resources available to students. Maybe they existed and I just didn’t know it. I was not a part of a student facebook page, group chat, or a child life student organization in my undergrad.
Luckily, my graduate school cohort provided me with so much support and a lot of great information but, it still lacked a lot of basic resources for finding out information about hospital sites.
This website is an amazing jumping off point for your research https://allchildlife.wixsite.com/programlist
Here you can search by state to see what programs have child life and if they are offering student programming. As stated on their website and I will reiterate here, I encourage you to do your own research as well. I would use this guide as a starting point and visit each website individually.
Feeling overwhelmed? Here is a step-by-step guide to help you get started. Take it one hospital at a time!
- Create your excel or google sheet with needed information (hospital name, contact info, affiliation requirement, etc.)
- Think about the cities or states you would consider moving to and start your google search. I personally googled “children’s hospital’s in Georgia”. I made my list of hospitals and went one by one to each site individually.
- Once you get to the hospital website, find the search bar. Type in “child life”. Sometimes this will yield the perfect link, sometimes it doesn’t. It can take a bit of searching around to find the child life student page.
- Take down important information that you may need later. You may even want to add a link to the student page for quick reference later!
- Still have questions about requirements? Send an email! (Then check out my blog for tips on hospital communication!)
Hopefully this gives you the tools and motivation you need to get started. Interested in a pre-made excel sheet for tracking hospital communication? Click here to get it sent straight to your inbox!
