'The Alex'

We were delighted to be asked by our friends at Banana Park to provide roleplay services for a series of development centres for nurses at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton recently.

The hospital - affectionately known as ‘The Alex’ - was officially opened in 1881 by their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, but in June 2007 the new hospital opened on the Royal Sussex County Hospital site, which has won an international design award and continues offering pioneering paediatric care.

It’s an amazing place — a state-of-the-art, ten-storey, custom-designed building in the heart of Brighton, offering 24-hour emergency care service for children and an improved range of medical and surgical services, meaning far fewer youngsters will have to travel out of the county for treatment.

One feature of the new hospital is that every inpatient bed is matched with its own pull-out carer bed so parents can be close to their children throughout their stay. Meanwhile, there is a range of dedicated family accommodation consisting of en-suite bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms and terraces.

But the best thing about The Alex is that it’s designed for young people by young people. Indeed it is thanks to the creative input of many current and former patients that the hospital is bright, friendly, colourful and...well not at all like a hospital.

In fact young patients are often reluctant to leave, and you can see why, particularly when among the features on offer are toys galore, an ice-cream machine and a wandering clown!

However, that is probably to overlook the real reason for the Alex’s world-class service. And that’s the people who work there. The development centres delivered by Banana Park offered those nurses recognised as high achievers a one-day development programme designed to give them practice in handling difficult situations and an insight into their own behaviours and motivations.

As well as group coaching sessions and personality profiling, delegates were asked to handle three difficult situations in simulated meetings with CentreStage roleplayers. The characters included an anxious mother, a demotivated colleague and a rather officious senior consultant. And while the roleplay element clearly represented a challenge for the delegates — many of them quite young and new to development centres like this — huge benefit came from simply having a go and being stretched beyond their comfort zones.

Banana Park is a creative consultancy that works with CEOs, Directors and Senior Managers to unlock their potential as leaders and awaken the talent of their people to succeed beyond their own - and their customers’ - expectations. They help to pinpoint the performance issues affecting individuals, teams or the entire organisation and develop novel ways of addressing them.

Contact Banana Park on 01306 644916 or chris@bananaparkconsulting.com