Adventures in Child Life

While not very Child Life friendly, it is sometimes necessary to use a papoose with younger patients in the ER for procedures such as facial lacerations. Up until now, when prepping these little ones for their procedure I’ve told them about being wrapped up like a cocoon but it usually didn’t matter what I told them as soon as the papoose was brought into the room. So, I decided to make a doll-sized papoose so that I can show these little ones about their upcoming cocoon and they can practice putting a doll in & out of it and using the velcro straps! Having made the papoose out of a mailer and duct tape, it’s easy to wipe down in between patients. The Velcro is also an awesome detail to show them since the real Papoose has tons of it. The Papoose in our ER is blue so to make it as realistic as possible, I used blue duct tape. The metallic pink is from the mailer I used (its actually an ipsy mailer!) This was a nice touch because being pink & blue it can be used with boys and girls without getting annoyed looks from pre-schoolers for having brought the “wrong” color.

Papoose’s are never fun but are sometimes necessary to keep both the patient and the physician safe when doing delicate work with sharp tools. Hopefully my papoose prep can help ease the fear and anxiety little ones feel when needing to get into their own little cocoon. One more thing, before I’m shunned for having a Barbie that cannot be easily cleaned in the papoose, let me assure that she was just modeling the papoose for Adventuresinchildlife!  I still need to find an appropriate toy to use with patients.