Expert Consensus on the Clinical Practice of Child Life Services

As an integral component of modern pediatric healthcare, child life services are designed to address the psychosocial issues that children may encounter during hospitalization and other medical care processes, and to mitigate the negative impacts of stressful experiences. Given that child life services in China are still in an early exploratory stage and lack unified and standardized clinical practice guidelines, a multidisciplinary expert consensus development group was jointly established by West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Children's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital of Fudan University, and the Children's Cancer Foundation of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Through a systematic literature review and expert deliberations, this consensus has been formulated. This consensus covers the target population, applicable settings, implementation environments, selection criteria for practitioners, training and assessment of practitioners, practice principles, core service content, implementation processes, and outcome evaluation, providing effective clinical practice guidance for child life services practitioners.