Guest BioMary Jenner, is a nurse, healthcare innovator, and founder of The Butterfly Pig, a company dedicated to transforming children’s healthcare experiences through play-based education and trauma-informed tools. Her educational tools are used by over 150 hospitals worldwide, and by tens of thousands of families. She is also the host of the Care Rewritten podcast, deepening her mission to end preventable medical trauma in children — not by asking overstretched clinicians to do more, but by redesigning the systems around them. Episode DescriptionIn this episode, Dr Kate Renshaw sits down with Mary Jenner, paediatric nurse and founder of The Butterfly Pig, to explore the full spectrum of medical play — from everyday child-led play at home through to specialist therapeutic intervention. Mary shares the story behind Butterfly Pig: how years working in paediatric oncology showed her that children cope better with medical procedures when play is part of the picture. She discovered that demonstrating procedures on a child's teddy bear before doing them on the child made a world of difference to their understanding and cooperation. That observation eventually became a company, a mission, and a movement. In this episode Dr Kate and Mary explore: • The continuum from everyday medical play to therapeutic medical play, and why the difference matters for families, funders, and healthcare systems • The multi-tier model of support: parent, nurse, child life specialist, and play therapist — and how each role is distinct and irreplaceable • How children shift from experiencing procedures as something happening to them to becoming engaged participants when they can parallel process through play with their own patients • What post-traumatic play looks like, how it differs from healthy processing play, and what families and nurses might watch for • CORA (Contextualised Optimal Relationship Approach) — how any professional working with children can build relational, playful skills without a therapy qualification. AUS listeners: Contact Dr Kate Renshaw to explore CORA training for your organisation/staff team (TORA Certified Facilitators (who are highly trained to deliver CORA training) are available in every state and territory. NZ listeners: Dr Kate is presenting CORA across 4 dates and cities in September 2026 — register here via Compass Seminars NZ Both Dr Kate and Mary had a copy of Integrating Therapeutic Play Into Nursing and Allied Health Practice in hand during recording — a fitting symbol of the bridge this conversation builds between nursing, allied health, and therapeutic play. Resources & Links Guest • The Butterfly Pig website: thebutterflypig.com • Instagram: @thebutterflypig • LinkedIn: Mary Jenner Dr Kate • Connect with Dr Kate's work: drplay.com.au • Dr Kate's CORA speaking tour, New Zealand, September 2026 — Building Thriving Connections: CORA, Christchurch, Friday 18 September 2026 — hosted by Compass Seminars NZ Book Referenced in This Episode Parson, J. A., Dean, B. J., & Hadiprodjo, N. A. (Eds.). (2023). Integrating therapeutic play into nursing and allied health practice: A developmentally sensitive approach to communicating with children. Springer.
