What is a Gaming Specialist?
The highest-ranking member of a League of Legends clan?
A certain type of theoretical physicist?
That one friend who is always watching charity streams on Twitch?
A video game and technology expert who works with hospitalized children?
The Responsibility of Gaming Specialists
Gaming Technology Specialists were first funded by Child's Play in 2017 to enable hospitals to hire dedicated positions. As a member of the Child Life Department, the primary role of a Gaming Specialist is to use video games and technology to make life as normal as possible for a kid who’s in the hospital.
Gaming Specialists are using tools like Starlight Nintendo Switch Gaming Stations to help kids who are too sick to leave their rooms to find respite to cope with the challenges of hospitalization. Play offers a distraction from painful procedures and sometimes even educates a child, helping them better understand the procedure they’re about to undergo.
The Benefits of Gaming
Gaming has multiple benefits for children including a sense of normalcy, a way to connect with others and a sense of control. In these ways and more, gaming can improve the quality-of-life for pediatric patients who have a long-term hospital stay.
Playing games with gaming specialists is a great way to get kids out of their hospital beds and interacting with one another while simultaneously alleviating the boredom and loneliness they can feel during a hospital stay.
Gaming Specialists allow clinicians to not only make the best use of the technology at their disposal but also keeps them on top of the latest developments thanks to the expertise they bring to the world of pediatrics.
Give Hospitals the tools Gaming Specialists Need
Every year, 5 million kids are hospitalized. Starlight offers programs like Starlight Gaming to hospital staff our 800+ hospital and medical facilities across the nation.
When Gaming Specialists have the tools they need, they can empower children to remain resilient through one of the most trying moments of their lives.
Help us keep delivering happiness through gaming to seriously ill children.
Donate towards Starlight Gaming today.
