A million views for children at hospital videos

● Mother’s need to reassure daughter leads to landmark for charity

A series of videos to help reassure children about hospital procedures has reached a milestone one million views.

Edinburgh mother Marit Boot founded the charity What? Why? Children in Hospital (WWCIH) in 2015 and has so far made 32 videos explaining everything from MRI and CT scans to allergy tests and X-rays.

She decided to act after being unable to find any childfriendly videos to reassure her daughter Susan, then five, who was anxious about going to hospital for an MRI and EEG.

Ms Boot said: “I realised I needed to show my daughter in a positive way what was going to happen otherwise she would struggle to complete the procedure and could develop a fear of hospitals.

“We played pretend hospital with a teddy bear, cardboard box, strings and stickers, and

0 Marit Boot’s videos aimed at supporting children in hospital have reached million view milestone this helped us both to prepare for hospital. I was very proud of her as she did really well in hospital.”

At the time Ms Boot was working at the NHS as a senior manager for children with complex needs and after receiving positive feedback from a survey of parents she set about securing charitable status.

This allowed her to apply for funding to make the videos, which cost around £6,000 each to make and take around six months to complete.

Ms Boot, 45, said she always hoped her films would be helpful but admitted it was hard to believe just how well they would . She said: “We are ever so happy, it’s a big achievement after starting so small. When I started I hoped it would maybe reach 1000 views in the first year – now we are at one million people so I’m so excited. It’s been amazing the response from across the world, we have had lots of different countries – Japan, Australia, America – saying they are using this in [their] clinics and it make such a difference.

“It’s been a big difference to the doctors and the families themselves as well.”

She said she had only planned on making ten videos at first, after which she planned to return to work. Howeverthefilmshaveproved so popular she is now focussing on the charity full-time.

“The list is growing and growing so there are lots of videos that we still need to make,” she said. Every week I’ll get another email about a procedure I’ve never heard of before but I look up all the information and work with the doctors to make sure give the information that families are looking for.”

The next film to be released will be one explaining what happens during skin prick tests. The videos can be found on Youtube or at www.whatwhychildreninhospital.org.uk