For many children, visiting a radiology department can be a stressful and difficult experience. Having your pictures taken can often involve big, scary, loud equipment; uncomfortable positions; and even painful procedures. At Cincinnati Children’s Radiology Department, child life specialists help to decrease the stress and anxiety of radiology procedures in order to help patients and families cope more positively.
Child life specialists are trained professionals with expertise in child and family development. Their training allows them to support you and your child before, during, and after stressful procedures. Child life specialists focus on providing age- and developmentally appropriate information to patients, teaching them what will happen or what they will be asked to do. During a procedure, they help to distract children through play or media such as music, videos, or video games. In addition, they teach coping techniques like deep breathing to help lower fear, stress and anxiety. After a procedure, child life specialists help families process the experience in order to explore feelings, acknowledge accomplishments, praise successes and clarify misconceptions.
Having child life specialists as part of our imaging team helps us to perform high-quality imaging studies for our patients. Child life specialists are assigned to work in the Radiology Departments of the Main Campus and Liberty neighborhood location.
Alex is a radiologist and the Neil D. Johnson Chair of Radiology Informatics. In this role, he helps to manage the information systems used by the Radiology department. Clinically, Alex is the Assistant Director of thoracoabdominal imaging. His research interests include liver disease, liver tumors, inflammatory bowel disease, and appendicitis.
