Construction work has officially commenced at the Queen’s Medical Centre Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Nottingham
The plan is to provide an additional 21 neonatal cots at the Queen’s Medical Centre Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) is the main neonatal intensive care service for the region, caring for around 1,000 babies and their families each year at the QMC and City Hospital.
It is exciting that we’re now entering the construction phase of such an important and much needed project
Currently, the service has to transfer babies out of Nottingham to other hospitals each week, sometimes beyond the East Midlands, as there are not enough intensive care cots to meet demand.
Similarly, Nottingham is not able to accept the babies from the region for whom it should provide intensive care.
The Maternity and Neonatal Redesign Programme at NUH will see the QMC Neonatal Unit increase the number of intensive, high dependency and special care cots from 17 to 38.
The Nottingham Neonatal Service strives to provide the best care to babies and their families
The project is jointly funded by NHS England and NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and a series of enabling works have taken place to allow for construction to expand the unit to begin.
These enabling works have seen the Paediatric Surgical Unit within Nottingham Children’s Hospital transformed into a temporary Neonatal Unit while construction work to expand the unit is carried out.
The move of the neonatal unit to their temporary home has successfully taken place and construction work on the expanded unit has now begun. The aim is for the new, expanded facility to be completed by the end of 2024.
The neonatal unit expansion will enable us to accept more babies from Nottingham and the East Midlands who need our care
Jenni Twinn, Programme Director for MNR said: “It is exciting that we’re now entering the construction phase of such an important and much needed project. The neonatal unit expansion will enable us to accept more babies from Nottingham and the East Midlands who need our care, rather than having to transfer them to another hospital which often results in families being a long way from their support networks and in extreme circumstances when we have no capacity can lead to the potential separating of twins and triplets.”
Lleona Lee, Consultant at NUH and Clinical Lead for the MNR added: “The Nottingham Neonatal Service strives to provide the best care to babies and their families and now that construction is underway we are taking a significant step forward in being able to achieve this on our new, expanded unit.”
Following relocation back to the new expanded unit at QMC, the Neonatal Unit at City Hospital will become a ‘Local Neonatal Unit’, where babies can continue to receive high dependency and special care and be managed in intensive care for up to 48 hours, before being transferred to the QMC for longer term care where needed.
