Children's Singing Nurse Honoured With 'Unsung Hero' Award

An English nurse who sings for sick children has won an award honouring unsung heroes. Sally Spencer, an advanced leukaemia nurse, has been given the for her work on Singing Medicine, a wellness programme aimed at distracting and soothing patients with song, at Birmingham Children's Hospital.Spencer, who has been working at the facility for 25 years, performs alongside a local choir named Ex Cathedra, as part of the therapeutic music initiative with which she came up in 2002."I became very involved in the choir's education and participation programme and did lots of events with children in primary schools,” the nurse told BBC Radio WM."We did a big celebration event in Symphony Hall and it was just full of joy. The children were buzzing and I had a thought that the children I look after [at the hospital] miss out on opportunities like this.Seeing young patients lose precious years to illness made Spencer sad, so she decided to make good use of the positions she held at the hospital and with the choir, and introduced singing."I was in a fairly unique position as I had my foot in both camps", she explained, adding that she’d often stress Singing Medicine isn’t just performative, but also has “enormous benefits”.Spencer and hospital staff often find themselves helping with physiotherapy. By singing, she said they can “keep the children moving”.

Sally Spencer, a leukaemia advanced nurse practitioner, has won the Sky Arts Hero Award, a nurse who created a wellbeing programme involving singing to sick children.

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The programme’s positive impact was recognised by the Sky Arts Hero Award, which celebrates the use of art for helping local communities.According to Spencer, its sole titleholder this year, the award was a surprise."I was fed a whole bunch of lies to get me to the children's hospital that day. I'd been told that we were there to film a short film about Singing Medicine's 20th anniversary,” she recalled.