Neonatal ICU & PAU
What We Did
The scheme has a surgical NICU on the first floor and a Pediatric Assessment Unit on the ground floor. The NICU element is a joint project between Alder Hey and Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust as the Liverpool Neonatal Partnership. The unit will offer a further 22 neonatal single cot rooms to reduce movement of infants around the unit and facilitate a mixed acuity model of nursing and medical care. Each room will be suitable for providing all levels of neonatal care including invasive respiratory support and bereavement care. There is also integral accommodation for parents, including clinically well, but recently delivered mothers, in 18 individual family rooms where parents can be alongside babies whilst they are receiving care.
The dedicated surgical NICU will provide the safest environment possible for the youngest patients and their families and will further compliment the Liverpool Neonatal Partnership between the two hospital sites. It will also reduce the number of unnecessary and sometimes risky transfers of neonates between Alder Hey and referring centres, significantly improving the experience of patients and families.
Central to the new unit will be the use of new innovative technology. This will include real-time monitoring linked to both observation equipment and cameras which report all the babies statistics to allow clinicians to monitor and see babies remotely. There are further technologies being worked through currently to support the vision of a silent NICU including Neonatal Tracking.
The Paediatric Assessment Unit (PAU) is to be relocated next to the existing ED. This is a short stay service for children and young people referred by other path ways. The Unit provides a rapid assessment of children and young people and aims, where clinically possible to assess, treat and discharge home in a short space of time, usually 24 hours. There are 22 rooms in total (one of which is an Isolation Room and another a Mental Health Room). The patient spaces also include a separate treatment room, family bathrooms and play space.
