Staff working in the children’s Panda Unit at Salford Royal have come up with an innovative way to reassure young patients during the COVID pandemic.
Frontline clinical staff are required to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) - such as face masks and visors - and the team on the hospital’s paediatric emergency assessment unit were concerned about making their young patients anxious because of the way they looked.
So, they have come up with a simple but effective way of turning the tears into smiles – by adapting their visors with popular film and cartoon characters.
Colourful cutouts of animals, Disney and Toy Story characters have been added to the tops of the protective face visors to distract and cheer up the young patients.
Rachel Baird, matron on the Panda Unit, said: “During this challenging epidemic we are continually developing new ways of communicating with our patients throughout their time spent in hospital.
“Staff have created these character visors to reduce anxiety in a PPE-filled clinical area and to offer some extra reassurance to our children amidst a potentially scary environment.”
Nathan Griffiths, consultant nurse and clinical lead on the Panda Unit, said the visors are helping to calm children down during what is already an anxious time.
He added: “Being in hospital can be daunting for a young patient at any time but now they we are wearing masks and visors, it can be quite scary for them.
“It’s important that we build a trusting rapport with our patients and the characters on our visors are a fun way to distract them and make them smile.”
Rachel added: “From greeting patients in triage, to assessing and treating them on the unit, these character visors have been welcomed with many smiles, stopped some tears and have brought about some very interesting conversations. The parents and staff quite like them too."
