
You can watch this special trolley in action on the Canberra Hospital Foundation's Instagram reels.
The Neurodiversity Distraction Trolley and the Sensory Room in the Emergency Department at Canberra Hospital assist health care teams in providing empathic, attentive care to neurodivergent patients who might need specific sensory distractions when they are receiving treatment.
We spoke to Dr Alison Lally about how your generous donations fund tools like the Neurodiversity Distraction Trolley and how this tool has positively affected interactions with patients and their families. Having completed her training as a registrar 4 years ago, she now consults with the team in the Emergency Department. In the past 18 months, she has placed more of a focus on improving care for paediatric patients, in particular those with additional needs like chronic medical conditions and neurodivergence.
Can you tell us about The Neurodiversity Distraction Trolley?
Neurodivergent patients have particular sensory needs that help with their regulation. For a neurotypical person, it can be hard to wrap your head around, and it has certainly been a steep learning curve for me learning about sensory profiles. Whether we are aware of them or not, we all have particular sensory needs to cope with the stress we might experience. This is true for children as well. The trolley has tools to help patients with both tactile (touch) and oral sensory needs, and it acts as a distraction tool for many of our other children undergoing procedures.
For example, for those kids that become regulated by tactile, a fidget spinner is a great tool, as are stretchy animals. We have some oral tools such as pinwheels to blow or balloons to blow up. For those children who need to reduce a lot of stimuli, we have sunglasses and ear muffs to reduce the noise. Canberra Hospital Foundation has also provided iPads, which we use for apps that help with distraction.
How does it make a difference for patients?
With the implementation of the trolley, we have also rolled out education, which has led to increased awareness of neurodivergence and simple strategies to improve the experience for our patients. Some of these strategies are used for adult patients, too. We have had parents sigh in relief knowing that there are staff who are aware of neurodivergence – not everyone is prepared to come to the ED with their regulation tools.
How does it make your job easier?
Parents and patients who are calm, less heightened and feeling heard, makes everything more positive. We have patients and their families who are able to feel comfortable and able to have a positive health care experience. This is so important for children so they will continue to seek health care as they grow, given their previous positive experience.
What would you say to people thinking about donating to CHF?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. When you give, you are providing tools for our team to go above and beyond for patients. We can obtain more equipment and tools to help our patients in the emergency department, and it also contributes to the ongoing funding for our distraction and sensory tools.
Is there a stand out story or moment with the trolley that you can share?
We have a few tools that have been a game changer in our department thanks to Canberra Hospital Foundation’s support for our sensory trolley. For many of our children requiring sedation for a cannula (needle in the arm), we have a light projector that is almost mesmerising, together with bubbles and stickers that create a safe and sensory-friendly place.
Another child was dysregulated and we used some oral tools like balloons, bubbles and pinwheels that were able to de-escalate. We could see that mum was starting to relax more as well.
I would like the Canberra community to know how much we appreciate their donations to Canberra Hospital Foundation and the way they support the Emergency Department at Canberra Hospital.