Events Child Life Story

When a bus crash devastated one Austin community, the Child Life Department at Texas Children’s Hospital Austin played a key role in calming and reuniting the preschoolers and their families.

It was just after 4 pm on a Friday in March. Child Life Specialist Alyssa Geis and her teammates were taking a group photo with the newly erected Texas Children’s Hospital sign when they got the call: a bus carrying more than 40 preschoolers and adults had crashed in Bastrop. 

The Austin campus had only been open for about a month, but while the facilities were still new, the years of experience and knowledge the Texas Children’s providers had was critical in this developing emergency.

“As soon as we got the page that a bus load of children was headed our way, we started to mobilize,” Geis says. 

For Geis, mobilization meant she and her team began gathering resources and collaborating with other departments to ensure the children arriving at their door were met with friendly faces and expert care.

The Child Life Department works alongside the Texas Children’s care team to alleviate stress and anxiety for patients and families. These “play professionals” have been medically trained to provide interventions that help prepare children for their hospital experience – and to build positive coping mechanisms during and after treatment. They offer programs like music and art therapy or cuddles with our animal-assisted therapy dogs. They also provide family assistance, such as pre-admission tours, sibling support, grief counseling, and special events or activities that help energize and engage patients and families.

On this particular day in March, the child life specialists in Austin met each patient as they arrived via ambulance – and then stayed with each child to ensure they had a friendly, familiar face throughout triage, treatment, and family reunification. 

As a 14-year Child Life veteran, Geis’s expertise played a crucial role in keeping her patient calm, despite trauma, age, and language barriers. Part of her role involved familiarizing the patient with aspects of emergency treatment by playing with toy medical equipment (with the help of the on-staff Spanish interpreter). Another part of Geis’s care was holding her patient’s tiny hand and quietly singing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” as the trauma care team moved them through various tests and treatments.

“We got to stay with them until their parents arrived,” Geis says. “By the end of the day, we had them in one area, so everyone could play together or interact with other families. Parents could support each other while they waited.”

Comfort and recovery are part of the long-term goals that the Child Life Department has for every patient encounter. 

“Along with learning to cope with pain or uncertainty, part of what Child Life does is minimize potential future trauma or hesitancy around doctors,” says Geis. 

This event had many factors that could have created long-lasting impacts on its victims. Fortunately, for these preschoolers and their families, the Child Life team carried Texas Children’s Hospital’s standard of care. The team of nurses, doctors, surgeons, child life specialists, social workers, and interpreter ensured that each family was able to leave that same evening with positive outcomes and smiles on their faces.