The following message is from Sheffield Children’s Hospital:
“At Sheffield Children’s Hospital we have been working hard to keep patients and staff safe during the pandemic. This has involved changing the way we work and ensuring that we are compliant with the national guidance issued by NHS England/ Improvement and Public Health England. This involves frequent hand washing, social distancing and wearing PPE.
Following Government guidance, it is now mandatory for any visitor on NHS premises to wear a face covering and for all staff to wear a surgical face mask. However, we work in a range of settings outside of the NHS, with many of our staff working with children and young people in the community, in their homes and at school for many different reasons.
We thought it would be helpful to clarify what personal protective equipment you might find a Sheffield Children’s staff member wearing and in what situation. This will help school staff and pupils understand what our staff may look like whilst in your building.
- If a Sheffield Children’s member of staff attends a meeting at a school with school staff and they are socially distanced (2 metres apart) they will not be wearing any PPE.
- If a Sheffield Children’s member of staff needs to work closely with a child or young person to do a procedure such as immunisations, speech and language therapy or helping with special equipment that a child may need, and they are closer than 2 metres apart, they will need to wear a mask, gloves and a plastic apron. If any procedure involves the airway, or counts as an ‘aerosol generating procedure’ they may wear a visor and a different sort of mask. They will also wear a gown instead of an apron. This is to protect both the young person and the member of staff.
We are aware this is different to how Sheffield Children’s staff usually look when they are in schools and we appreciate this can be daunting for young people. We are doing this is because our staff aren’t just working in the same bubble of children similar to those in a school, they will be visiting children across the city in a variety of settings including hospitals and health centres. By wearing this PPE, they are protecting the children and young people, everywhere, as well as themselves.
How can we explain this to pupils?
At Sheffield Children’s we’re doing lots of work to explain what PPE looks like and what happens if you are looked after by us. We’re frequently sharing pictures of staff in PPE on our social media as well as updating resources on our website. You can learn more about what PPE looks like on our coronarvirus resources page – you can even make your own ‘PPE people’ to understand what the equipment might look like on a person – please see the posters below.”
Visit our website here:
