Teens get a room of their own at MCGHealth

Children’s hospitals often have playrooms for young patients who have acute or chronic illnesses.

When 16-year-old Chantal Gunn was in the hospital, she was pleased that young patients at MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center in Augusta had a cheerful place to play with toys and coloring books, but watching “Dora the Explorer” didn’t really entertain her.

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Photo courtesy of MCGHealth

Chantal Gunn, 16, beats the drums while Jennifer Wallace, a child-life specialist at MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center, strums a guitar as they play a rock ‘n’ roll band video game in the hospital’s new teen room.

An adverse reaction to medication that turned into liver and kidney failure put Gunn in the children’s medical center for 20 days last year.

“I would watch a lot of the cooking channel and I love to read, but at times I would be so bored that I thought I was gonna go out of my mind,” said Gunn, a senior at T.W. Josey High School in Augusta.

Gunn wished for a haven where she could get away and get her mind off her illness.

“No offense, but I don’t really want to play with crayons,” she said. “When you’re in a kid’s hospital, they treat babies up to 18-year-olds, and [we] all get lumped together… Teens need a place, too.”

Thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Alicia Rose “Victorious” Foundation, MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center now has a teen room, where patients age 13 to 18 can hang out and play games.

The foundation was established by Gisele and Mario DiNatale in memory of their daughter, Alicia Rose DiNatale. The 17-year-old spent many days in the hospital before she died from a rare form of cancer in 2002. Dedicated to enhancing the quality of life of adolescents with life-threatening illnesses, the foundation has furnished teen lounges in hospitals across the country.

Child-life specialists at MCGHealth went straight to the source and asked Gunn and other adolescent patients what they’d like to see in a teen room. The results: walls decorated with collegiate football jerseys, posters and caps, as well as beanbag chairs, a couch, rockers, a large flat-screen TV, a DVD player, a stereo and shelves lined with board games, movies, books and materials for arts and crafts.

There’s also a computer with Internet access and a PlayStation 3.

“The new teen room provides a place where teens can be teens,” said Kimberly Allen, manager for child and adolescent life services at MCGHealth. “We want them to have just as many opportunities for entertainment as the younger children do and to feel like their needs are being met here.”

— Additional reporting by Laura Raines, Pulse editor.