Proning the Conscious Patient – Visual Storytelling

Proning the Conscious Patient – Visual Storytelling
​By Tom Whittaker, Digital Learning Developer

There was an idea: to bring together a remarkable group of people and deliver a video demonstrating why and how to prone conscious patients with COVID-19.

Proning patients saves lives. Some of the sickest patients in Critical Care will be turned onto their stomach to help them to breathe. It’s not a complex process but it’s also not one that has been widely performed out of CCU. It was a perfect opportunity for the Acute Care Team and the Digital Learning Team to combine our powers and produce a high-quality training video to show staff in ELHT and beyond how proning works.

With a concept in place and a script finalised, we moved to filming the different elements of the proning process. This included a visual demonstration of the skill alongside a description and discussion of the process – just like if you were in a classroom (and your instructor was able to become a floating head). Some of the techniques we used were new to us and took a little bit of that special ELHT ingenuity to pull off. Even so, we captured crisp, clean footage of each step of the proning process.
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The story doesn’t end there. Once we had the raw footage and audio, we needed to edit them into something that could be let loose on the world. Trying to get the cuts and overlays just right nearly became our villain origin story, but I’m pleased to say we all remain on the side of good for now. This was truly a team effort, and we’re grateful to the Acute Care Team for coming to us and letting us help bring the concept to life.​