Ivy’s Story: My first video appointment

Meet eight-year-old Ivy. After being cared for at Sheffield Children’s since before her first birthday, Ivy from Lincolnshire has recently attended her first video appointment with her mum.

Video appointments have lots of benefits including helping us decrease the number of people coming into Sheffield Children’s, reach families who are self-isolating, as well as saving families time, money and potential stress travelling to us. It’s all through a platform that has been specially developed for healthcare. So far over 156,000 video appointments have been attended!

Over the years, Ivy’s care has involved an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (EVT) – which creates a bypass for the cerebrospinal fluid in the head, in place of a shunt as well as MRI scans, blood tests and the removal of her gallbladder in 2019.

Her mum, Arabella said: “Sheffield Children’s have always been brilliant, caring and accommodating.

“The video appointment went really well. It was a joint clinic between Sheffield Children’s and another hospital so both Trusts were on the call. I followed a link that I received by text and signed in to the portal. It was all a really smooth and easy process.  It also saved us travelling to hospital and waiting around in the waiting room.

“I work every day so this saved me taking time off work and Ivy missing out on school.”

Some face-to-face appointments will still be necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision on whether an appointment will take place face-to-face, on video or by telephone will be taken by an expert clinician based on each young person’s individual care needs.

Find out more about how we are using video appointments to continue to provide outstanding care on the patients and parents page.