It’s the place that no parent or child would want to find themselves, but for 25 years, staff within Hull Royal Infirmary’s Paediatric High Dependency Unit (PHDU) have been providing a safe pair of hands and a great listening ear.
September 2026 marks 25 years since the city’s hospital opened its own PHDU which, at the time, was also the first dedicated high dependency unit for children in the region.
Serving newborn babies right through to patients in their mid-to-late teens, the unit has provided a lifetime of care for some families and forged many a career dedicated to the youngest and most vulnerable people in our society.
Vanessa Brown, now Deputy Nurse Director for Children, Young People & Neonatal Services, was the charge nurse tasked with creating the unit at the start of 2001 alongside consultant paediatrician, Dr Hilary Klonin.
Vanessa says:
“The launch of the unit was driven by national changes in the direction of travel for paediatric critical care and also by the way we found ourselves delivering care for sick children locally at the time. We would often find we had one or two really poorly children dotted across the various different paediatric wards, which meant care could be a bit fragmented or inconsistent.
“Opening a dedicated paediatric high dependency unit gave us the chance to bring some really skilled people together and focus our care on some of the hospital’s sickest children in one place. Over the 25 years countless staff have developed their skills within paediatric high dependency care and it is the staff who have made this unit a success.
“It was a really exciting time as we built the team and designed the facility with the needs of the children in mind, and I have to say it was probably one of the best times of my career. It made me very proud and it was so fulfilling; we built such a tight team that people wanted to work with us but just couldn’t get a job here as nobody left for about ten years!”
After months of hard work and planning, Hull’s PHDU opened on the 12th floor of the Hull Royal Infirmary tower block on September 3rd, 2001.
It was a low-key opening for the four-bedded unit at the end of the baby ward compared to the ‘official opening’ which took place two years later, in August 2003, courtesy of the late Emmerdale and The Royle Family actor, Peter Martin (pictured below). Around that time, Peter’s granddaughter Amy had been cared for by the team on PHDU, so when the unit relocated to new accommodation on the second floor, he was only too delighted to do the honours and perform the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
PHDU has been subject to further ward moves since, providing a room with a view for some families when it was based on the tower block’s 13th floor, and most recently finding its home back on the second floor, in January 2024, in purpose-built accommodation adjacent to Woodland Ward.
Each year, the team comprising doctors, nurses, healthcare support workers, students, play specialists, ward clerks, pharmacists, therapists and housekeepers provides a full support system for around 400 young patients and their families. The team cares for children with a wide a variety of illnesses from cardiac issues and meningitis to severe respiratory problems, as well as providing intensive post-surgical care.
Over the course of its lifetime, Vanessa estimates Hull’s PHDU will have supported more than 10,000 patients and their families, a milestone which she considers “ quite an achievement, and an immense privilege.”
“The original opening was very low-key, I don’t remember it being much of an event,” Vanessa continues. “It was much more of a celebration in 2003 when Peter Martin opened the unit for us, I remember being interviewed by reporters and the TV coming down to film, it was a real occasion for the staff and the families there with us.
“Twenty-five years on, I think I’m one of the few people who are still here and working in paediatrics to have been around for that full journey; it’s unbelievable really to think it’s been a quarter of a century.
“Every now and then, we’ll get a parent of a child on the ward telling us they were also looked after on PHDU as a child, and that makes me feel really old!
“So much has changed in that time though, from the types of treatments we are able to offer to the technology we have to help us and even how we try and keep children entertained during those long days on the ward.
“Advances in medical care also mean better outcomes for children; some children don’t need to spend as long in hospital as they would have done 10 or 15 years ago, and other children can stay with us for longer without the need to transfer to more specialist centres. Sending children further afield for care in Leeds or Sheffield, for example, used to be quite common at one point but as our skills, our expertise and our facilities have developed, we’re pleased that the vast majority of patients and their families can stay close to home now and near to their own support networks.”
Anne Dalby (pictured above right, with Vanessa Brown) currently works as the ward sister for Woodland Ward, the Paediatric Assessment Unit and PHDU. Anne originally completed her nurse training in Hull, then departed to work in hospitals in Sheffield, London and Nottingham before returning to Hull in 2005 to continue her career in paediatric medical care – a move she describes as ‘coming home’.
“I’ve been the ward sister here for nine, going on ten years soon, and I will be here until I retire,” she says.
“One of the best things for me about PHDU is the environment we’ve created. We have a number of familiar faces, children who are really quite poorly so they’re often in and out, and it’s so important that we get to know those families and build relationships with them. There are times when, as a nurse, you can spend practically an entire shift with a single family, so getting to know people, becoming a friendly face for them and providing continuity of care all makes their stay in hospital so much easier.
“Having a baby on the ward who is really sick and then seeing them go home well, or having a family bring their child back in to see us and they’re fully recovered and full of beans has to be one of the most rewarding things in the world.
“Week in, week out, we just keep on doing what we do because people need us, but we don’t often stop to think about the impact we’ve had on literally thousands of people’s lives over the years; the children, their parents and siblings, extended family and friends. As PHDU reaches a quarter of a century, we’re now seeing a second generation of children coming through and that’s a real reminder of just how important and how integral our unit is to our local community.”