Super Saturday 2

Leeds Children’s Hospital delivers hundreds of extra appointments and trials new technology on ‘Super Saturday 2’

By Suzanne Abrahams - General Manager for Leeds Children’s Hospital

On Saturday 5 March 2022, Leeds Children’s Hospital joined nine other children’s hospitals across the country to host a second collective ‘Super Saturday’ event to boost the recovery of children’s services affected by the pandemic and to spotlight the continuing hard work of NHS staff. I’m delighted to say that we were able to schedule 28 additional operations and over 100 outpatient appointments.

As General Manager I have coordinated our participation in the National Paediatric Accelerator Programme, an initiative designed to bring together NHS trusts to tackle waiting lists inflated by the impact of the pandemic. We have been working with other leading specialist children’s hospitals including Great Ormond Street, Alder Hey, Birmingham and Manchester Children’s Hospital. On Super Saturday 2 - as we called it - our colleagues ran extra clinics, additional theatres and trialled innovative models of care in order to speed up access to our services. Our theatre lists focused on dental (working with our colleagues from Leeds Dental Institute) and PEG to button procedures. Additional clinics included asthma, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, gastroenterology and endocrinology. In total we were able to schedule 28 additional operations and over 100 outpatient appointments. Leeds Children’s Hospital also ran a host of additional Super Saturday activity including: tablet taking workshops, a bloods drop-in, mini-mouth-matters sessions, photo scrapbooks for patients with additional needs, new family friendly way-marking (have you seen Jerri the Jellyfish yet?!) additional physiology support and more! Along with other members of the Children’s Hospital management team I was onsite to support our teams and meet with patients and families to see first-hand how these initiatives are helping patients and families. It was gratifying to talk to families who were just so happy with their experience. I spoke to parents of children who had been waiting months for their elective PEG to button surgery but thanks to additional theatre lists on Super Saturday 2, had surgery brought forward, avoiding a longer wait. It was also a real privilege to see some innovative new ways of working in action. I was lucky enough to see some virtual reality distraction therapy (VRDT) in action in different areas. VRDT, led by our Play Team, makes use of VR technology to distract patients from painful or distressing procedures, reducing the need for general anaesthetic. On Super Saturday 2, for the first time, we used VRDT for a patient undergoing a surgical procedure, without a general anaesthetic. 15-year-old Mohammed had both ingrowing toenails removed under local anaesthetic with additional VRDT. It was a huge success and we’re currently looking to expanding our use of VRDT across Leeds Children’s Hospital. Our application of VRDT in theatre as well as more minor procedures has attracted attention from local and national media, NHSE and paediatric colleagues across the country. This has been a fantastic collaboration between medical, surgical, research and play specialist colleagues. I want to thank everyone who was part of the planning, delivery and evaluation of the day. You really did Leeds Children’s Hospitals proud. Planning is underway with colleagues across the country for a third national Super Saturday event later this year so watch this space!