“Typically, I have patient interaction at least three to four times a day, and then I will have one to two play sessions a day,” she says. Recently, she taught a father and son who had limited gaming experience and watched them bond as they learned to play. Some patients are unable to read or are non-verbal, so she may help guide them with colors and shapes when possible. Other times, she might teach a younger child a gaming system, playing alongside them or helping them compete with a sibling or cousin. Sometimes, she might encounter a teenager who brings a device that needs to be connected to WiFi, so they can engage with friends outside the hospital. Interacting and gaming with patients (“The best part.”)īordeaux’s days are varied, but she tends to interact with patients more early in the week when more new patients arrive.“It’s a really cool job.” What Does a Gaming Specialist Do?īordeaux describes her job in three parts: “I felt like I would have kicked myself the rest of my life if I didn’t apply for this position,” Bordeaux says. She looked toward a career in speech-language pathology. She knew she wanted to work with children and earned a health science degree. Still, the idea of building a career around gaming didn’t occur to her. “I've built my own gaming computer, if that tells you anything.” “I've been pretty much gaming my whole life,” she says. Petersburg so she could play without inserting quarters. She remembers her dad rigging the arcade game in the family tire store in St. A Gaming Backgroundīordeaux says she has been gaming since she was 5 or 6 years old. “It definitely is not a very traditional career,” she says. Often the positions are grant funded and give the hospital another tool to create a better experience for patients who need to be in the hospital short or long term. I think many children will benefit from this program.”īordeaux is part of a growing trend of gaming specialists at children’s hospitals. “I’m not big on video games, but I was 100% on board in this case because it gave him a push in a good direction. “We used it as a reward to get him to move around the room,” says Julian’s mother, Ana. Bordeaux uses video games and virtual reality to break up the boredom of a hospital stay and motivate patients to think and move. His balance was off, he couldn’t move his left arm that well and he was in the strange surroundings of a hospital room.īut Brittany Bordeaux brought some motivation.īordeaux is the recreation gaming specialist in the Child Life department at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Julian wasn’t always eager to get out of bed after surgery for a brain tumor. She uses video games and virtual reality to motivate patients to think and move and create some normalcy amid a hospital stay. Julian plays a video game with gaming specialist Brittany Bordeaux at Johns Hopkins All Children's.
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