Colourful Paediatric Assessment Unit with children’s needs at heart set to open doors in Chesterfield

In June, Chesterfield Royal Hospital is set to welcome a £27 million Emergency Care Department (ECD), bringing innovations used in the best hospitals around the country, to Derbyshire.

The Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU), which will open as a part of the multi-million development, is full of bright colours picked by children and parents at the Chesterfield inpatient ward, with each area having a different palette – including hot pink and turquoise blue walls as well as purple doors.

The waiting area has been adapted for young patients too – with a welcoming yellow wall and a circular LED light fitted at a reception desk at a level of toddlers’ eyes to keep the youngest patients interacting with the environment.

Tracy Barker, of Unstone, a Lead nurse for Family Care at the Chesterfield Trust, has been involved in the designing process from the very first day.

Tracy, who has been working at Chesterfield Trust for 24 years now, said: “I am so excited to be planning a place for families that we wanted to provide for ten, eleven years now. We want to make families who visit our new unit feel as if they were wrapped in a blanket and kept safe until they can go home.”

Tracy who was trained at Bristol and relocated to Derbyshire after she got married in the nineties, is passionate about helping children and families.

Before joining the team in the Royal Chesterfielf Hospital, she was a teacher at a special school in Sheffield where she was working with autistic children daily but decided to change jobs to be able to fully use her medical training.

She said: “I got a temporary job in Royal Chesterfield Hospital for six months with the intention to decide the next steps for my career later. But I fell in love with the people I worked with in Chesterfield and with the ethos around making sure that we provided the best care for the families involved. Soon six months turned into 24 years.

"Families are always worried and desperate to get the best and quickest help for their children. It’s understandable because no one wants their child to be sick.

"The new ward will really help families to ease their nerves as it will allow us to get the right children to the right place much quicker and send them home quicker.

"Medical professionals will see children that arrive at PAU within 15 minutes for initial assessment and build a plan so children will not be fractious. It will make it much easier both for the children and their parents."

After the PAU patients will have their plan ready, they will be able to benefit from the innovative medical equipment and improved access to doctors.

Tracy said: "The new ward is much more compact. Before you had three or four different diagnostic machines. Now we will have just one which combines different measurements, for example, can collect data on the temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate at once.

"PAU will make it easier to see and find the right staff member as well. Now children are spread out in the inpatient ward and it is sometimes difficult to find the doctor you are looking for quickly. The new design means the unit will be easier to navigate for families.”

The design of the building is impressive but Tracy believes that the biggest innovation is around the workforce and staff.

She said: “The continuous involvement of the paediatric team has been very fortunate for the project. Builders were very accommodating and had regular meetings with us and always gave us plenty of time to consider the options offered.

“Play therapists who have a crucial role in helping children understand more about being in a hospital, worked closely with the designing team to understand what will help children in the assessment unit.

"Builders probably thought we were bonkers as the ward looks very bright, has an area with couches, and is as far away from the hospital environment as possible while ensuring it’s clean and allows medical professionals to do their job.

“A big innovation is that Chesterfield Trust allowed us to have physician associates at the children’s ward who support doctors in the diagnosis and management of patients.

“Physician Associates are popular in the US but have only been working in the UK for about 10 years now. We have three of them in our trust already and will have another one from the Children’s Ward in Birmingham joining the team at the Assessment Unit.

"Three who have been working with us so far have been absolutely brilliant and we have district generals asking us for feedback on working with them.”

As children coming to the new pediatric unit will be referred by a GP, A&E or Emergency Department, Tracey reassured parents that going to the PAU is nothing scary.

She said: “PAU is a perfect place if a health care professional thinks your child needs a bit more pediatric input. We want to reassure the families that it is nothing to be afraid of and we are here to help.

"Launching PAU is just a start of a journey for improved medical care for Chetserfield children and we don’t want it to be the end. We want PAU to be a journey that evolves thanks to the feedback from our local families.

"We will be encouraging families who visit us to suggest what they would like to change and tell us if there is anything we missed that would help the next family.”