Show Me Where was created by a school nurse from the Hollies Special School, Cardiff for children with autism and speech disabilities. The tools have helped children at the school to communicate pain and discomfort, and reduce their anxieties about being examined by school nurses or other health professionals.

Show Me Where can be used by health professionals in all clinical areas to assess and locate pain. In emergency situations, it can be used to quickly identify the location of pain when a person cannot speak. During consultations, healthcare staff can use the fan tools or app to help them identify where a person’s pain is located when they have communication difficulties, for example following a stroke.

Where a person also has physical disabilities, the health professional can talk through the images and point to them, allowing the patient to nod or blink to indicate agreement. Following its success, it has since been adopted as a pain assessment tool in all clinical areas across Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, and many other organisations.