Just what the patients wanted at the Mercy Hospital, Cork

Carol O’Callaghan visits the new family room at the Mercy University Hospital’s Children’s Leukaemia Unit.

It’s the dread of every parent: their child is diagnosed with a serious illness and family life transfers from the comfort and ease of home to a hospital ward where maintaining any semblance of normality is challenged.

The only place to take a break is in a noisy canteen or a corridor, and the idea of slipping out to a coffee shop means being away from a needy child for too long.