Welcome to Hull Royal Infirmary

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest acute Trusts in England.  We have a turnover of over £400 million per year, employ over 7,000 staff and provide a range of hospital services, including specialty care for complex conditions.

The Neonatal Unit is in the Women and Children’s Hospital (second floor) on the Hull Royal Infirmary Site.

Hull Women and Children's Hospital

The Hospital consists of:

• Antenatal clinic with scan facilities 
• Antenatal Day Unit
• Labour and Delivery Suite with theatres
• Antenatal and Postnatal Wards
• Neonatal Unit
• Transitional care
• Paediatric out patient department
• IVF clinic
• Administration area
• Staff / visitors cafeteria

The Neonatal Unit

The unit in Hull has 30 cots, of which 5 are designated intensive care beds. The unit consists of intensive care, high dependency and special care areas. The majority of admissions are mainly sick and / or preterm babies, although we also provide care for surgical babies.

There are two double bedrooms with en suite facilities available for parents to be resident along with a sitting room fully equipped with wide screen TV, fridge and microwave. There are also 2 bedrooms for parents to stay with their baby in the special care area.

The Staff

We have five consultant neonatologists:

There are usually 2 – 3 registrars and 4 – 5 Senior House Officers on the unit.

The unit manager is Linda Phillipson (Linda.Phillipson@hey.nhs.uk) and is to be found in or around the unit at most times from Monday to Friday.  Charge nurses and senior staff nurses support her.  The remainder of the team are a combination of staff nurses, clinical support workers and auxiliaries. Around 80% of the staff are neonatally trained and currently function as preceptors and mentors for new staff and students.

We also have a professional development nurse for neonatology, Val Christian, who is responsible for co-ordinating and implementing the in-service training and continuing professional education of nursing staff on the unit as well as updating practice issues. Val is a regional link between other neonatal units in the Yorkshire Neonatal Network.

We have advanced neonatal practitioners on the unit who work very closely with the medical and nursing staff and support the midwifery staff in the transitional care area.

We have four neonatally trained outreach midwives who follow up most babies born under 34 weeks gestation or below 1.8kg in the community. They also support the early discharge of some babies such as babies needing home oxygen.

The unit strongly supports the development of advanced nursing practice and the development of nursing skills with the excellent career and academic opportunities available. There is a pathway for nurses to develop their advanced role utilising the equivalent of the E.N.B. 405 course (Special and Intensive Care of the Newborn) and more recently the E.N.B. A19 course (The Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner).

Admission to our Neonatal Unit

The decision to separate mother from her newborn baby is an important one and is not undertaken lightly.

The following babies will be admitted to the neonatal unit:

• Babies < 35 weeks gestation
• Babies with a birth weight < 1.8 Kg
• Babies requiring medical investigation, treatment or nursing care for unexpected conditions e.g. hypoglycaemia, respiratory distress, possible sepsis, jaundice requiring double phototherapy
• Babies with a known antenatal condition or congenital abnormality where additional monitoring or nursing care is anticipated e.g. Rhesus incompatibility, Pierre robin syndrome, some congenital heart disease
• Babies requiring observation for neonatal abstinence syndrome (except babies born to mothers who are stable within a methadone programme as assessed by the MDT AND who are on < 30mls/day of methadone)
• Babies born to insulin dependant diabetic mothers (gestational or pre existing diabetes)
• Babies transferred back from other hospitals for ongoing medical or nursing care (ideally admitted into isolation until MRSA swabs proved negative)

Family Centred Care

The concept of family centred care is regarded as fundamental to the provision of care to children at the hospital or in the community. This concept is actively promoted within the NICU, seeing parents as partners in planning care and involving the whole family in delivering and evaluating that care. Recognition that the family has needs and that they can play a major role in determining the care of their child facilitates their ability to cope with the crisis of a child in hospital.


Out patient follow up

Some babies will need to be seen in out-patient clinics after they have been discharged home.  All five consultants have out-patient clinics, some of which are at Hull Royal Infirmary and others at Beverley Westwood Hospital.

The clinic times are as follows:

Last modified: Aug 2008