Specialist helps young patients cope during hospital treatments

Sometimes when she needs a little encouragement, Logan Health Children’s Child Life Supervisor Amy Rohyans Stewart consults her “atta girl” file — full of mementos from past patients and families.  

One on her desk at all times is a card that pictures a pastel superhero costume on a clothes hanger which reads: “this must be yours.”  

It came from the mother of a former 6-year-old patient who had “crippling anticipatory anxiety,” according to Rohyans Stewart, and had tried several times to get a procedure completed, but always backed out due to her distress.  

As the little girl sat on a chair, curled into a ball with her head between her knees, Rohyans Stewart began by sitting down next to her.  

“I just started saying ‘I can only imagine that it's pretty scary to come here again, where there's all these people and you don't know them. You just know that they're going to do things and you don't want to be here — and that has to feel really scary,’” Rohyans Stewart said.  

Eventually, through some distracting conversation and her unwavering drive to help children feel safe and confident, her patient was finally able to get through the procedure. 

Child life specialists are health care professionals who help children and families navigate the process of illness, injury, disability, trauma or hospitalization, according to the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.  

In her role at the hospital, Rohyans Stewart walks children through how an upcoming medical procedure or surgery will go, sometimes using toys as aids. Her work runs the gambit from supporting the family, helping facilitate schoolwork, providing play opportunities and bereavement services, among other roles.  

When determining a coping plan for a patient, she asks herself questions like “what is the culture and context of their family? What kind of support do they have? Have they had a prior bad experience in a hospital or clinic?”  

Meeting people where they are is the first step, she said. 

"For all the kids, it's about finding those bits of a circumstance that they have control over, because it feels like they have none. Right? This is just something that has to be done to them,” Rohyans Stewart said. “So I try and craft this into: ‘you get to set the scene, how do you want this to go? How do you want to sit? Who do you want next to you? Do you want to hold their hand? Do you want to watch something on the iPad? Do you want to listen to music?” 

PLAY IS one of the most important ways for kids to cope and learn, Rohyans Stewart said, and is a huge part of her job. Not only does it bring her patients joy, but it also leads to a quicker recovery.  

“The fringe benefit is that a lot of these kids go home faster because they're motivated to walk their fish to the fish tank, or to the playroom, go out to the playground or participate in physical therapy because we make it fun,” Rohyans Stewart said.  

Quincy Bennetts, an inpatient pediatric physical therapist at Logan Health Children’s, is thankful every day to collaborate with Rohyans Stewart and watch her “child life magic.”  

“Learning to move again after a big injury can be very scary and sometimes painful. Amy helps them understand their feelings, learn to cope, as well as offer awesome distractions and rewards that motivate them to try their best,” Bennetts said. 

Currently, one of Rohyans Stewart’s favorite toys is a fart machine. She said it comes in handy when patients can’t move much, like a recent 4-year-old patient who was temporarily paralyzed after surgery.  

He could move his fingers enough to press the button on the fart machine, which Rohyans Stewart conspired with him to sneakily put in the pockets of people who came into his room. 

"I’d be winking at him and then he would push the button, and of course everyone was in on it, so it was this huge, huge reaction. And he just thought it was hysterical — he would just laugh and laugh and laugh. And so again, I gave him control,” Rohyans Stewart said.  

Honing in on what is going to work best for every patient is her ultimate goal. She recalled another patient who ran and hid when nurses came into his room to draw blood one day.  

Utilizing loose parts playing with cardboard and other bits of clean trash she saved, she asked if he wanted to sit down and build something. Soon enough, he had built a fortress around himself and asked her if she could help glue an alarm to the top of its door because he didn’t want anyone to show up unannounced.  

Other kinds of play, like medical play, can clear up a lot of misconceptions.  

“I had one kid say to me ‘I got diabetes ... I really shouldn't have kicked the dog,’” Rohyans Stewart laughed. “I said ‘let's back that truck up for one minute. You know that's not how that works, right?’” 

In between moments of laughter and brevity, and hope for patients, some children won’t recover. When Rohyans Stewart must offer bereavement support for families, she said it’s still important to help create opportunities for joy when possible. 

“One of my little buddies has a tumor on the inside of his skull ... And we just had this miraculous wonderful playtime, we did handprints, he painted, and we made them into creatures,” Rohyans Stewart said. “It’s one of those cases where we know it’s coming but not when, but we created those memories. I'm all about how can we create memories and help families create those memories in the moment.” 

GROWING UP, she had her own experiences dealing with hospitalization as a child after nearly dying from tonsilitis complications at the age of 4. Originally from Helena, she remembers spending a lot of time in the hospital and getting many shots of penicillin, which she despised.  

“At one point, I thought I was allergic to East Missoula because we drove and by the time we hit East Missoula, I was so sick. So no, I never thought I would end up in health care,” Rohyans Stewart said. “But a friend of mine that works here said, ‘you know, I just wonder if sometimes you grow up to be the person that you really needed as a kid.’ And I certainly did.” 

It was a transformational summer at Camp Māk-A-Dream in Goldcreek, Montana as a 25-year-old that led her on the path that would blossom into her health care career. A camp for kids and teens who have cancer, Camp Māk-A-Dream has hosted thousands of participants since opening in 1995, according to the organization’s website.  

Once she crossed the “Bridge of Dreams” at the camp, she said one chapter of her life ended and the next had just begun. She was in charge of a cabin of five tween girls from Boise that summer, who she formed close bonds with. They encouraged her to go to Boise to meet their child life specialist at St. Luke’s Children's Hospital, who would go on to offer her an internship.  

Rohyans Stewart worked as a child life specialist in Boise for 22 years, where she also created programs for certain procedures like voiding cystourethrograms, eventually moving up to become a supervisor at St. Luke’s.  

In 2019, she decided to make the move to Kalispell to be a little closer to family while she and her husband raised kids of their own. Feeling a little closer to her roots, Rohyans Stewart began leading the child life program at Logan Health Children’s. 

Her work has touched many patients' and families’ lives, like Jodi Ockunzzi. She met Rohyans Stewart when her 2-year-old daughter was receiving treatment for leukemia at Logan Health Children’s.  

“Her dedication to patients, their siblings and their families is unparalleled, and she truly makes a difference in every child’s life that walks through the doors,” Ockunzzi said. “The day your child enters the hospital is a daunting one, but with Amy by your side... you see the light at the end of the tunnel and find each and every silver lining.” 

There are ups and downs in the job, but Rohyans Stewart is the most excited when her “shenanigans work,” meaning that her gut instinct on how to best help a child is correct, and they come out of an appointment feeling accomplished. 

"I’m not only trying to help them cope here, but trying to pack their little toolbox full of tools for the rest of their lives, right? They can take all the things that they've learned here and use it,” she said. “The ultimate goal for any child in a health care setting is for them to not need child life, that they have found independence within themselves to say, ‘I can do hard things. And it's OK that it’s scary, I can still get this done.” 

For more information on the child life program at Logan Health Children’s can visit www.logan.org/services/childrens/our-child-life-program/ 

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com.