Clip-on cartoon characters on staff visors increase connections with children | from Royal Hospital for Children, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
Wearing PPE, particularly visors, creates a visual barrier between nurse and patient, and can look intimidating, especially to younger patients.
Melville Dixon, Orthotics Lead, and the paediatric orthotics department at NHSGCC wanted "to make healthcare staff wearing full PPE look more recognisable to our children and young people, using images which they are able to recognise as familiar to them."
So, Melville developed bespoke removable headpieces to attach to visors, which depict cartoon characters such as Spongebob Squarepants and Wonder Woman.
The headpieces are infection control approved and can be decontaminated after use.
Feedback has been fantastic. Gael Rolls, Lead Nurse at the Royal Hospital for Children said, "Staff in ward 3A have embraced the images for their visors since they are a ward who perform a high number of AGPs and have patients who are long term ventilated both day and night so are now seeing their staff caring for them in full AGP PPE which is very different to how the children were used to seeing their nurses and other carers."
Some patients choose their favourite images that they want the staff caring for them to wear. This gives them more of an active role in their treatment.
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