Credit: Manchester Evening NewsWe can all agree that hospitals are not a very comfortable place to be at, and recently, due to the world’s COVID-19 pandemic, it’s even worse!
The sight of hospital staff wearing face masks, full body protection suits and visors can be terrifying. If being in a hospital is scary for adults, image how a child — that might not have a full grasp of what is going on — can feel?
But people are creative — The staff at the Children’s Panda Unit at Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester decided to bring the Disney magic to make the hospital a little less scary for child. How? Well, by customizing their face masks!
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According to Manchester Evening News, frontline hospital staff are required to wear PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), such as face masks and visors, during their shift to protect their patients and themselves. But the staff at the hospital’s pediatric wing got concerned that all of that protective gear might make the little patients anxious.
So, they got creative and customized the visors to have Disney and Pixar characters on them!
“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,” said matron on the Panda Unit, Rachel Baird, during an interview to the Manchester Evening News.
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The staff also said that the colorful Disney cutouts on top of their visors are helping to ease patients and bring smiles to their faces. “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,” said Nathan Griffiths, consultant nurse and clinical lead on the Panda Unit, to the Manchester Evening News.
Rachel Baird also said “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.”
Such a great idea! It is uplifting to see people using this creativity to help ease other’s troubles during these pandemic. And, specially, because it involves Disney characters.
So, what did you think about the idea these hospital staff members had during the pandemic? Let us know down in the comments.