PICU colouring book launched!

Today we have been across to see the amazing Paediatric Intensive Care team at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge to deliver them 500 copies of the colouring book we created for them.

We were approached by the Ward Manager of PICU earlier in the year and asked to update their old material to help explain what happens in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit to their patients and their siblings in an easy to understand way.

The redesigned material needed to work in two ways. Firstly, it needed to help explain the different areas of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit and the main aspects that might seem strange or scary for patients or their siblings. Secondly, it had to be engaging for the children, which is why we went for creating a colouring book.

For this we created two main characters, Jake and Emma that would guide the children around the hospital and would also be relatable for the audience. We then added the star – Rocco the Bear – who we hid on every page for the children to find!

 

We then spent some time re-working their existing content to make it more accessible to a young audience but also made sure that it explained all the things that the team needed it to.

Giedre then worked her illustration magic and created fantastic scenes for each of the scenarios, creating an accessible and friendly representation for the children to colour.

We are all really pleased with this project and how the final printed version looked. The best endorsement for us is that it gained great feedback from Addenbrooke’s ‘Active’ panel, which is a group of children who review all child related projects. If they love it, then we couldn’t ask for any more!

We really loved working on this project and creating something that would be used by the children who are patients on the unit or brothers and sisters of those who were.