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Before I started at CUH in 2007 I had worked with children and young adults for a long time. I trained in theatre, taught dance and drama and worked in youth clubs, childrenÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and community centres. I was training and assessing play and youth workers, when I realised how much I missed play! Being a play specialist has used all of my previous experience. I’ve tap danced to distract a patient while she had blood taken – she called out the steps and I did them. The doctor laughed so much. Another time a patient and I choreographed a song using spoons as part of a play session.

By the time this is published I will have retired from CUH. I’ve worked with hundreds of patients and I have never become bored of this role. There is always a new challenge. I am most proud of how I worked with a patient who needed a bilateral below the knee amputation due to meningitis. How do you prepare a child to wake up without her legs? We worked with a doll to explain what would happen and I sewed black patches onto the dollÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ legs to match the ones on the patient. We talked about the procedure at length and afterwards I published an article about my learnings from the experience.

Becoming a play specialist takes dedication and years of training. I have mentored five of the play specialists at CUH and it is a lovely legacy to see some of them now be mentors themselves. There is real skill in the work they do, to initiate conversations with children of every age. To help a child who is so anxious and unpick those issues. We have the same methodologies to use but all children are different and the team responds uniquely every time. They find a way to enter a childÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ world in a way that gives them a route back to us. I worked with a particular patient over some time, who was being regularly admitted, and struggled with the hospital setting. One day we went up to the tenth floor at AddenbrookeÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ and just drew what we could see; it really helped her to get away from the stresses of the ward. The time I have spent with children has been really memorable.

Having the support of the wider staff on a ward has been important too. There have been some very difficult cases and sometimes I’ve had to shut myself away for a cry or have a cry when I got home after a shift. Having a colleague to call in the evening to talk it through has helped. Sharing experiences means there is always someone else who understands it.