Page 28 - QARANC Spring 2024

28 The Gazette QARANC Association
‘Caring for the children caught up in conflict’
The paediatric cadre in Defence is held in the army at 306 Hospital Support Regiment (HSR) – a nationally recruited Reserves Unit. Capt Louise Jones tells readers about her role as SNA(Army) for Paediatric Nursing.
I joined the army as a Paediatric Nurse rather late in the day at the age of 52 years. And in my role as Specialist Nurse Advisor (Army) – Paeds for the past three years, I have been encouraged to raise awareness of our existence with personnel of all ranks and roles from the Army, Navy and RAF.
My civilian background is over 40 years in the NHS, (RN Child and Adult) primarily in Paediatric Intensive Care (including as Matron and Lead Nurse for the service) but more recently, getting experience in the crazy world of the Emergency Department!
It is fair to say that sick and/or healthy children have always cropped up during Ops and continue to do so – now in increasing significant numbers. Whatever the rules of engagement in conflict are, and whatever the eligibility criteria for humanitarian and disaster relief, children will turn up, and ethically and emotionally, when they are standing in front of you, it would be very tricky to turn them away from care or treatment.
There are 10 PIDs for Paediatric Nurses and four PID’s for Paediatricians. We live in all corners of the UK, but our base is at Queen Elizabeth Barracks, Strensall.
It is important that within these small cadre numbers, we maintain a range of sub-speciality skill set – paediatric ITU, ED, HDU and ward care included. And it’s important for the value of the cadre to Defence, that we maintain a polyvalence, to care for patient groups outside our individual normal subspeciality, including with adult patients.
As SNA my focus is improving the care that children and babies receive from military personnel, including recognising and managing them when their clinical condition deteriorates. As well as assessing and managing their pain, communicating and playing with them, involving the parents and
carers and keeping everyone safe. Defence personnel can be required
to care for children, often in austere conditions, with minimal (or no) training. The implications of feeling out of your depth (in this case with children) can lead to
the increased risk of mental ill health, sickness absence and even employee attrition.
the Paediatric Nurses have been out and about with me, delivering training sessions to units, doing our best to tailor the training to each audience depending on numbers, roles, the length and type of interaction they are likely to have with children and the platform they will
see them on, be it land, sea or air. We have been joined by our midwife colleagues from 306HSR, who have shared their subject matter expertise to teach us all how to provide the best care possible
to pregnant or recently delivered mothers. Much of what we teach is reassurance that children are still humans and like
an adult, if one doesn’t ‘look right’ they probably aren’t. We give lots of practical nursing ‘top tips,’ which are always well received. Strategies to stop them pulling lines out, getting an unwilling toddler to take
medicine etc.
Resources we promote include
Over the past three years
Capt Louise Jones