The Octavia Appeal for the Friends of Royal Brompton

The Octavia Appeal for the Friends of Royal Brompton - charity 278058

The Octavia Appeal is being run through The Friends of Royal Brompton, SW3, an independent charity which raises funds for projects around the hospital (the UK’s largest heart and lung centre), specifically to help the paediatric intensive care and paediatric ward with specific items.

I have taken on this cause because I have firsthand experience as a parent who has spent time with a child in the intensive care unit there. The specialist unit takes the sickest children in the country, most of which are on life support when they arrive and have become too sick to be cared for at the other more general major hospitals. A good day in the unit was one where we were told our child was strong enough to “probably” survive the next 12 hours, on a bad day she had a consultant or two by her side continually. It is a stressful environment not only for the patients and their parents but also for the medical staff.

Essentially, after our time there I could see a real lack of chairs around the life support machines in Intensive Care and the need for a coffee machine (life sometimes really is too short to go in search of a Starbucks!). Unfortunately coffee machines are out of the question due to infection control regulations but chairs are still in short supply. The hospital have also come up with 4 further items which require outside funding and it would be nice to be able to provide them so our aim is to raise at least £75,000. All money raised goes directly towards these items without any admin charges etc being deducted.

The identified projects are;

1- the supply of 20 chairs for parents at the bedsides in the intensive care units and on the ward,

2- the decoration of 4 sleep labs which they are currently building. They are intended to monitor children with life threatening conditions for a night or two at a time, with or without parents. The desire is to make them as comfortable, homely and inviting as possible within the sphere of hygiene and infection control. The aim would be to use decoration/furniture/lighting to make them as welcoming as possible and detract from the medical paraphernalia which will inevitable be in them,

3- a fellow for SPRinT – the Simulated Paediatric Resuscitation Team Training initiative. The Royal Brompton Hospital provides clinical care to seriously ill children. At any time these children can deteriorate and suffer an arrest. Recognition of a deteriorating child and early action can make the difference between life and death. Very often these events are sudden and extremely stressful for all involved. Being able to function efficiently under stress, work together as a team, and avoid chaos is vital to success.

The Simulated Paediatric Resuscitation Team Training (SPRinT) programme at the Royal Brompton Hospital aims to ensure that they provide the best trained, compassionate, paediatric team possible. The Friends of Royal Brompton arranged the funding of The Harley Baby (a open chest baby simulation model) which enables an accurate rehearsal of realistic cardiac emergencies. It can be programmed to simulate complicated cardiac emergencies and allows real life simulated training exercises to take place using the multidisciplinary teams required (individuals who often do not work together on a daily basis). They can then be filmed and a full debrief carried out to assess what needs to be learned, with the aim of eradicating ineffective processes and poor communication which can often lead to fatal medical errors.

The SPRinT team is a unique combination of different disciplines: doctors, nurses, consultants and surgeons working together giving their time to this programme (almost all of it voluntarily).

The success of the SPRinT programme and the use Harley Baby has been recognised and the current model is in high demand from other hospitals. Very recently the SPRinT programme was awarded funding for the teenage/adult open chest model from the London Deanery (1). A Research Fellow is now needed to establish that the use of the Harley Baby makes a positive impact on the multiprofessional team training and therefore impacts on patient care and safety. The resultant publications and presentations would promote this training model to be rolled out to other cardiovascular institutions.

The estimated cost is £54,000 but the benefits it would bring for the many children who find themselves in such situations, not to mention the publicity for the donor, would be immense. There is a detailed plan for this project for anyone wishing to see it,

4- the refurbishment of the parents accommodation, used by those whose children have been transferred to the hospital from other areas in the country,

5- the refurbishment of the parents waiting room on the paediatric intensive care unit,

6- the redecoration and colour scheme design of the paediatric intensive care,

7- the decoration of 2 rooms in the paediatric intensive care unit and 4 on the paediatric ward, and

8- a programme of music therapy for the paediatric ward, following the pioneering scheme they have used in other areas of the hospital.

By getting involved at this level it gives people the opportunity to choose their own discrete project to work towards and know where all their funds are going. This is essentially a project based in London but benefiting people from all around the South East and across the country, not to mention the wider international use for the open heart model child, so the direct and indirect benefits really will be felt by so many.