Our neonatal service cares for babies who need extra help after they are born. Some babies go there because they are born early, are very small, or they are unwell.
Our neonatal service at Ä¢¹½tvÊÓƵ is one of a handful of centres across the country which can care for the most poorly babies, with joint cardiac and surgical services providing specialist care.
We must ensure we have the right support in place to enable our staff to deliver safe and high-quality care to all our families, and we have a robust plan in place that will enable us to continue to improve and deliver high quality, safe care for the people of Ä¢¹½tvÊÓƵ and beyond.
Steps we have already taken to improve our neonatal services include:
- We immediately responded to the CQC’s request that we treat the most complex babies at Ä¢¹½tvÊÓƵ General Infirmary only, as a designated neonatal intensive care unit. This means that when babies are born at St James’s University Hospital and need more than 24 hours of intensive care or high dependency care, they must be transferred to another unit. We are continuing to discuss the impact of this with our stakeholders and NHS England.
- We are commissioning an external review of neonatal mortality (MBRRACE) data to understand more about how we compare with other similar organisations, and whether there are areas we can improve
- We are improving our staffing
- Fully recruited 25 new neonatal nurses who will be in position by October
- There has been a five-year programme of Consultant expansion
- From October there will be two separate Consultant rotas for each hospital
- Increased the number of nurses who can access the Quality in Speciality training
- We are improving our infection control and cleanliness Â
- Programme of work around handwashing in neonatal and visiting teams
- Increased visits and inspections to ward areasÂ
- We are improving our medicine storage and management Â
- Full stock audit Â
- Comprehensive checks implemented
- We are improving our storage of milk Â
- New secure process for delivery
- Lock box system individual to each patient
Other improvements include:
- We are establishing a Maternity and Neonatal Improvement Programme and Board which will have an independent chair and include people who have used our maternity and neonatal services, and staff
- Working group has been set up to ensure that learning is shared and disseminated
- Regular quality improvement, education and training sessions have been established
- A senior leadership huddle has been established with maternity colleagues
- Listening events are being held for the neonatal team
- We are holding civility and inclusion workshops for staffÂ
We will share our progress on this page and keep you updated about further improvements to our services.