Steph Hall is a senior children’s cancer nurse at Leeds Children’s Hospital (LCH). She tells us what life looked like on a children’s cancer ward before COVID, what it’s looked like during the pandemic, and what it’s looking like now.
As children’s nurses, we’re taught throughout our training the importance of family-centred care and the positive impact this has on patient experience and the wellbeing of the whole family. These principles are really important to us at LCH, particularly in paediatric oncology and haematology, where patients often have long in-patient stays.
Except for only allowing one parent to stay overnight due to space and safety, visiting our wards was open from breakfast until bedtime. We would see immediate family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and for the teenagers, boyfriends, girlfriends and friends coming in to support them while they were having chemotherapy. We supported patients to maintain normal relationships and as normal a life as possible, albeit one that involved having to live in hospital some of the time.
As nurses we knew all the important people in each patient’s life, and it was lovely to chat to them and hear stories of their lives before hospital. We often had the pleasure of joining in with family birthday parties that had to take place on the ward due to unexpected temperatures that meant they could not celebrate at home.
Then came COVID. Quickly this idea of normality went for us all, but even more so for those families having to come into hospital for cancer treatment. Family visiting was restricted as everyone worked so hard to keep each other safe. In the early days of the pandemic, visiting was restricted to one parent being able to be on the ward for two weeks. That’s two weeks of the child or young person not being able to see their other parent or siblings, and the resident parent not being able to see their other children.
Of all the impacts that COVID has had on nurses (the PPE, hand washing, staffing challenges, moving staff to support our adult nursing colleagues and vaccination centres) this has been the hardest thing. Telling parents that they’re not able to come on to the ward to see their child having chemotherapy has been absolutely heartbreaking.
Since the early days, visiting policy has developed and we no longer have to restrict visiting to one parent for as long as two weeks. At LCH, one parent can now visit for five days, then parents are allowed to swap every 24 hours. We’re still only able to permit one parent at the bedside, which we know can be so hard for these families.
As difficult as this is for all involved, keeping our patients, families and staff safe will remain our priority. I want to say a huge thank you to all of our families for their understanding and patience during this challenging time. We, as nurses, are looking forward to the time when we can see a patient’s whole family - in person, in the same room, and not just on a screen.
