Those toys

Some of our members attended at the Royal Sussex County Hospital Nuclear Medicine Centre to mark the handover of the toys and equipment for which the club raised funds at the Royal Pavilion Gardens Fun Day on 28 June 2009 and donated for use by children having treatment at the centre.

A number of staff members also came along including Dr Sabina Dizdarevic – Lead Consultant, Angela Staker - Sister, Professor Mike Peters – Consultant, Lynn Peters – Chief Technician, Helen Campbell – Senior Technician, Mark Applin – Physicist as well as a number of nurses, play supervisors and others.
Jade McShane the Rockinghorse Appeal co-ordinator who organised the event was also there. She is hoping to get some press coverage!

Brighton Lions Club were thanked by Dr Dizdarevic for the donation and expressed how valuable the equipment was in calming children, who are naturally distressed, by occupying and involving them. An added factor was that parents, seeing their children less apprehensive were much less stressed themselves. Sister Angela Staker and Prof. Peters also spoke in a similar way.

Lions were shown around the unit and told about the work that is carried out there. We were shown the playroom where the toys which we provided were already in use.

We also had demonstrated the projector which was provided. This equipment projects highly coloured moving images on to the ceiling above one of the treatment beds so that children can be distracted and absorbed when receiving treatment. We were told of one child who normally screamed during the 30 minutes treatment, who after an initial few minutes became so absorbed in the displays that their attention was completely taken up for the duration of the treatment. This enabled the operatives to work more effectively, undistracted by looking after the child and their parents.



The unit suffers from lack of resources to be used specifically for children as it is not often recognised by fund allocators that children use the unit. For instance they find that up to date DVDs suitable for children are very effective in distracting children but they do not have access to any funds which they could use for this purpose. The staff and nurses also like to have a small supply of ‘treats’ i.e. chocolates etc which can be given to the children when appropriate. Again no resources.

We will be looking through our stock of DVDs in our store, and there may be other ways in which we can assist.