Radiology Child Life Services

Hospitalization and medical procedures can be very stressful for children of all ages. Dedicated radiology child life specialists are available to provide strategies for helping your child prepare for and cope with their radiology procedure and overall hospital experience.

How we can help

At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, certified child life specialists are specially trained in providing care and support designed to meet the unique needs of children and families as they cope with illness, injury, treatment, hospitalization, and the overall healthcare experience.

We do this by providing age-appropriate and therapeutic play, preparation, coping skills education, distraction, emotional support and much more.

If your child is having a radiology procedure, child life specialists are available to help your child before, during and after their procedure. We use age-appropriate language and teaching materials, including dolls, videos, photo books, and real medical equipment to help your child cope with any radiology procedure or diagnostic test they may be scheduled for.

Visit our team page to meet the certified child life specialists you may work with in the Department of Radiology.

If you have questions about helping your child prepare for a radiology procedure, we encourage you to share that request with your medical team. You can also contact our radiology child life team via email at radiologychildlife@email.chop.edu.

Preparing for procedures

We have developed some resources to help children prepare for specific procedures.

MRI

• This child-friendly video cartoon can help prepare your child for having an MRI.
• Practice in the MRI mock scanner to simulate the real MRI experience. This can help us evaluate your child’s ability to complete an MRI before going in for the real test.
• Listen to common MRI sounds to help prepare your child for what to expect.

X-ray

• Our kid-friendly slideshow can help prepare your child for getting an X-ray.

All procedures

• A coping guide specially developed for radiology by our Child Life Specialists, as well as additional age-appropriate coping strategies.

Visit a list of radiology resources for more helpful information and documents.