Our work with Blue Light Services and HATS Group has highlighted the importance of making the journey to hospital for children as easy as possible. Ambulance staff do a fantastic job of making their patients feel at ease in a vehicle that can feel daunting. All the machines, lights, sounds and smells can seem overwhelming for some. Some hospitals and NHS Trusts have been looking into more ways to help their patients feel a little more relaxed on these essential trips for appointments and treatment.

Making that journey a little less daunting

Great Ormond Street Hospital is one such Trust that believes in the importance of first impressions. A child’s first glimpse of the ambulance that will transport them to hospital can become a moment of engagement, rather than fear or trepidation. If that ambulance is bright and cheerful on the outside, maybe it won’t be so bad on the inside too. It can be a real talking point and a little distraction from some of the more worrying things that may be going on.

Image courtesy of Great Ormond Street Hospital

Specialist children’s ambulance liveries

This is where the ambulance livery comes into play. Great Ormond Street Hospital were put in touch with us via our mutual contact, Karl Bailey, Director of Fleet HATS Group. Karl knew about the specialist themed ambulance liveries that we produce and saw this as a perfect option for the Great Ormond Street Hospital ambulances too. We have worked with HATS Group previously on PTS & HDU fleet, using their unique branding and safety reflective markings to meet CAST approved Emergency Service Vehicle use. This work included the first electric Ambulance in the UK and the Aqualance Children themed Ambulance.

The Great Ormond Street brief

The brief we were given from Great Ormond Street Hospital was to create a unique design to reflect their principles around diversity and to meet and engage with the children that would be transported within the new Ambulance Fleet. The young patients would be at the centre of our ideas – we needed to help make the children’s journeys as pleasurable as possible.

Over to our design team…

Due to the main focus of the project being the children that would use these ambulances, and placing their perspective at the heart of the project, we thought it would be a great idea to have designs created by children for the children. We received many design submissions and selected a stand out design created by Hollie Rose Pointon who is 13 years old from Chesterfield, Derbyshire.

We created the design concept with the input of Great Ormond Street Hospital and HATS Group from the beginning. A Peter Pan theme was the natural choice – it tied in with the Peter Pan ward at GOSH and we were given permission to use the copyright that GOSH own for Peter Pan too.

Our design team converted the design into a format that would be suitable for production, Hollie Rose communicating with our team all the way in order to keep the finalised approved design as close to her original drawing as possible.

Once our design team had created the finalised proof with Hollie’s blessing, we then sent this on to GOSH and HATS Group for final approval. It didn’t take long for the approved design to be signed off and excitement to build on what the finished vehicles would look like.

Find out how the ambulances turned out in the next instalment – click here…

If your ambulance fleet needs a new look or you would like to talk to a member of our team about a bespoke livery idea, contact us today…