Imagine you’re a woozy grade-schooler waking up in the ICU at night… And when you open your eyes, the first thing you see is a nurse on the other side of the glass painting Minions! Or, Raphael and Michaelangelo getting ready to battle Shredder!
If you’re a child in an ICU in Austin, Texas, that nurse might be our Nurse of the Week, Clinical Nurse Coordinator/artist Ly Truong, BSN, RN. Truong’s colorful hand-painted window murals of comic book, Disney, and Sesame Street characters brighten the days and nights in the pediatric ICU at St. David’s Children’s Hospital in Austin.
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Truong has been a pediatric critical care nurse for over 8 years now, so she’s had time to learn how to cheer up sick, lonely (and often frightened) children. When the pandemic began—adding a new flavor of stress to an already difficult experience—Truong grabbed her paints and chalk markers and embarked on a project to make the pediatric ICU a cheerier, chiller place for kids. “I hope for my patients when they get a chance to see me draw (because I work nights and they are sometimes asleep), it inspires them to be creative and fun,” she told Southern Living. “Or it at least reminds them that even in the hospital there can be a little bit of fun.”
In addition to brightening the environment of the ICU, Truong believes that offering young patients an opportunity to suggest subjects for her murals can give them a sense of autonomy in a situation where it is all too easy to feel helpless. She observed, “They [the kids staying in the ICU] don’t have a lot of choice about what they get to do, or they have to take all these medicines that they never had before, or they’re stuck in their room because they’re contagious. So, it’s really nice that they get to choose what characters go on the windows or choose what colors the characters are.”
Truong’s other masterpieces include characters from Despicable Me and PAW Patrol as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Elmo, Ernie, and Burt et al. Her ICU art has become so popular that St. David’s is asking her to do a larger-scale mural for the hospital.
To see a video interview with the multitalented Ly Truong, visit KVUE.
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