Charity gifts £40k worth of equipment to paediatric ward

Enables real-time monitoring from a screen at the nurses’ station

A new real-time monitoring system has been installed on the paediatric ward at Noble's Hospital.

The equipment, worth £40,000, means nurses can keep an eye on several patients - in different rooms - at once.

It has been made possible thanks to a grant from the Henry Bloom Noble Healthcare Trust.

The paediatric ward has historically had two 'high dependency' beds for sicker children equipped with monitors within the rooms. 

When an alarm went off a nurse needed to enter the room to assess what was wrong. 

However due to a sharp increase in the number of young respiratory patients additional high dependency beds are needed at times. 

Current staffing levels mean they could not increase the bed numbers without an enlarged and enhanced monitoring system.

The ideal solution was therefore to equip a further two rooms with monitors and connect all four room monitors to a central monitor positioned at the nurse station in the ward. 

This would enable a nurse sitting at the station doing paperwork to simply look up at the monitor and assess immediately what is going on and in which room.

Ward Manager Sarah Marshall said: "I’ve been here 17 years and it’s been something that we’ve been desperate for, for a long time.

"During winter months we see a significant increase in children being admitted acutely unwell with viruses and bacterial infections - these children often requiring high dependency nursing care.

"In the last six months we have been working collaboratively to ensure we meet the standards of the Paediatric Critical Care Society assessing what standards we meet and identifying where the gaps were.

"We’ve known for a long time that this equipment has been essential to the ward.

"Now that we have the two additional beds that we can use as high dependency it’s going to really help us keep children safe on the ward."

Business Manager for Integrated Women, Children and Families Jenny Davies approached the Henry Bloom Noble Healthcare Trust, in October last year, which approved the grant request.

A state-of-the-art Philips Intellivue Information Central Monitoring System has now been installed.

Malcolm Clague, the trust’s medical assessor and a trustee, added: "We are thrilled to have been able to help the Children’s Ward procure some additional equipment to assist with the provision of care for sick children on the Island. 

"It will not only aid with care during outbreaks of viral respiratory diseases over the winter but assist children experiencing seizures to be better monitored and assessed and also facilitate the return of those who have undergone heart surgery across to convalesce here sooner with their family near them."