When Words Do Not Say It All! How the Dance/Movement Therapy Supports the Mind, Body, and Spirit of Pediatric Patients and Their Families
Thursday January 23, 2020 8:00am- 9:00 am
(Grand Rounds)
Location:
Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters (CHKD)
601 Children’s Lane Norfolk, VA 23507
Course Description:
A pediatric cancer diagnosis affects the whole family. As the medical team attends to the child’s cancer treatment finding a treatment that provides emotional support for the patient and family members is challenging. A dance/movement therapy (DMT) creative arts program fulfills this need. Using the creative arts as a means of expression creates a safe environment where the patient and family can safely share their emotional responses, manage difficult medical procedures and experience ways to enjoy childhood. This presentation demonstrates the core elements that go into a DMT session. How these activities provide support during pediatric medical procedures, pain management, and overall coping with the emotional themes that arise with medical illness for all family members is highlighted. A core focus of this medical DMT program addresses the specific challenges that a potentially life-threatening illness bring to the family dynamics and the child’s developmental process. Through discussions, evidenced-based practice and experientials, participants learn about the key elements that build a strong pediatric DMT program as part of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The depth of versatile engaging activities, from calming to activating, that are utilized to adapted to the patient’s and family’s moment- to-moment presenting behaviors and symptoms is discussed. Collaboration across disciplines include music therapy, mind-body therapy, massage, child life, psychiatry, social work, nursing, and the physicians. A multi-sensory protocol developed by Dr Tortora that helps families and even infants and toddlers cope with treatments with painful side effects, is highlighted. How key principles of infant mental health are used to support each child’s social and emotional development to address complex family issues that compromise the child’s medical treatment is included.
Learning Objectives
1. Learn how to develop a DMT program in a pediatric cancer hospital within the context of evidenced-based practice.
2. Learn specific DMT –based treatments to support emotional expression and painful medical procedures.
3. Learn specific early childhood developmental stages to support when working young hospitalized medically ill children.
About the Instructor
Suzi Tortora, EdD, BC-DMT, CMA, LCAT, LMHC
Dr. Tortora is the founder and director of Dancing Dialogue PLLC, her full-time private practice in Cold Spring, NY and NYC, specializing in parent- infant/child and family therapy; trauma; medical illness; and adult chronic pain. She is the International Medical Creative Arts Spokesperson for the Andréa Rizzo Foundation, having created and continuing to be the senior dance/movement therapist for pediatric patients at Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NYC, since 2003. She received the 2010 Marian Chace Distinguished Dance Therapist award from the ADTA. She teaches in Europe, South America, New Zealand, Israel and Asia; holds faculty positions in the USA, The Netherlands, Chech Republic, Argentina and China; offers the Ways of Seeing International Webinar Training Program for dance/movement therapists and allied professionals; has published numerous papers about her work; and her book, The Dancing Dialogue: Using the communicative power of movement with young children is used extensively in dance/movement therapy training programs internationally.
Affiliations:
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, NY.
- Dancing Dialogue PLLC LCAT LMHC
Registration:
https://www.chkd.org/for-medical-professionals/education/continuing-medical-education/pediatric-grand-rounds/