Information for Children and Teenagers

If you are under sixteen years old you may be admitted to the Paediatric Critical Care Unit (PCCU) for your initial care or after your operation.

If the doctors are planning for you to come to the PCCU they will usually organise a visit the previous day. You will notice that it is noisy with bright lighting and lots of machines.

The doctors and nurses will check on you throughout your stay and will discuss how you are doing in a group in the morning, afternoon and evening. There will also be lots of other staff in uniforms doing other jobs such as making sure you are on the right medicines and you are having the right food etc. If you don’t know who someone is just ask them or your own nurse.

While you are on the unit you will be given strong pain killers and if you are on the breathing machine you will be on medicine to ensure that you are asleep as well. This will help you to relax and enable you to get some sleep if it is noisy at night.

Your parents can be with you as much as you want them to be although they will be asked to leave the unit for a few meetings on the unit in the day. This should only be for a short time. Your brothers and sisters can also visit if that is what you want. We do restrict friends visiting as the unit is so busy but you can ask if you want one or two friends to visit you. The nurse will let you know what time is best for this to happen.

A nurse will always be with you while in PCCU. They will be with you for the whole day/night.

If you are worried about anything during your stay please ask your nurse or any member of the team.

When you are awake you will see lots of tubes on you. These are recording information about you to different machines. They may make lots of noises to ask the nurse to check the machine or you.

Older children are nursed in gowns or their own pyjamas as soon as possible.

Try not to bring valuable items into hospital with you as it is an extremely busy place and things can go missing or get lost if you are being moved around different ward areas. You can use your mobile phone on silent once you are well enough to. There are also Nintendo games or TVs to watch if you feel up to it during your stay. Usually once you are awake and getting better you will be moved back to one of the wards.