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BBC<\/p>\nSarah-May BuccieriEast Yorkshire and Lincolnshire<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n
Toys are put in the ‘kitten scanner’ to reassure children<\/p>\n
A toy MRI scanner, designed to put children at ease before real scans, has saved \u00a3150,000 in sedation and care costs, health officials said.<\/p>\n
The Kitten Scanner at Grantham District Hospital is a miniature version of an MRI machine and allows young children to pretend to scan toys.<\/p>\n
Sandy Crook, play leader from the Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS group, said the scanner had been “overwhelmingly successful” since it was purchased two years ago.<\/p>\n
“I know from speaking to many parents they are thankful for the Kitten Scanner and that their little ones don’t need to go through sedation.”<\/p>\n
Ms Crook said staff understood hospital visits could be “daunting” for people, and the MRI scanner was “a noisy machine which can be difficult for patients to tolerate”.<\/p>\n
After the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Charity purchased the miniature scanner for \u00a315,000, Ms Crook said she was able to show children the device to play with.<\/p>\n
“When they are comfortable, I take them over to the MRI unit for their scan,” she said.<\/p>\n
“After their scan, they get a certificate, which is always very well received.”<\/p>\n
As well as calming children, Ms Crook said the kitten scanner had saved money “by avoiding sedation, as well as the time and costs associated with a short hospital stay on a ward to recover from a general anaesthetic”.<\/p>\n
After the success of Grantham and District Hospital’s scanner, Ms Crook said there was a possibility more scanners could be purchased for other locations.<\/p>\n
Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, watch the latest episode of Look North<\/a> or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah-May BuccieriEast Yorkshire and Lincolnshire BBC Toys are put in the ‘kitten scanner’ to reassure children A toy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-165137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}