PLANS have been unveiled for a £1.7-million expansion of a Bristol special care baby unit.
The proposal to expand the unit at St Michael's comes after the successful £1-million Cots for Tots Appeal.
The fundraising campaign added a new suite of four neonatal intensive care cots to the unit and improved the accommodation for families whose babies are being cared for.
Moving family accommodation away from the unit to Cots for Tots House – which is set to open within weeks – across the road from the hospital will make way for much of the expansion, while the extra space on the unit will enable the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to bring the additional rooms up to the standard of the new cots, which opened in January.
The 635m2 expansion will not increase the number of cots on the unit but will provide more space for the sickest babies.
Since the additional four cots were added to the NICU in January there are now 31 babies on the unit.
The extra space will make way for a room of six cots and two single rooms for infants who may need to be nursed on their own, leaving four beds in what is currently the main intensive care room. It will also bring the NICU up to national guidelines, while being a more pleasant place for families to attend.
The special care baby unit at St Michael's cares for some of the sickest and most premature babies in the region and is the South West specialist centre for those that need surgery. It also provides cardiac care for babies from across the region and South Wales.
Under the plans one bedroom will be alongside the unit so that there is somewhere private for parents to go if their baby is severely ill or dying, in line with guidance from the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity (Sands) and Bliss, the charity for babies born prematurely or sick.
Julie Vass, deputy divisional manager for children's services at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said that staff changing rooms some office space and other non-clinical areas would be moved to make way for the bigger NICU.
"What we are doing is all within the national guidance with this type of care," she said.
"The whole focus now is on improving a lot for the patients."
NICU matron Kay Pullen said: "This will make the NICU comparable with what they have got in paediatric intensive care units amd adult intensive care.
"People always thought babies needed a smaller space but they don't because the equipment is the same size, apart from the incubators.
"This will also make a bit more space in high dependency – a bit more space to breathe really.
"Standards say there should be no more than six patients in a room because of privacy. Although it is a little more difficult for staff, it gives us privacy for families and babies."
Work is hoped to start on the project next month with the aim of being completed by the end of the year.
The aim is then to look at refurbishing the rest of the NICU over the next couple of years.
Ms Pullen said: "Other units have been upgraded and we seem to be the last, so when babies come from Exeter or places like that with fantastic new units you can see the parents thinking 'these people are supposed to know more than the place we have been before'. I think it is reassuring that the environment will be the same as what they have been used to before.
"We are going to go to the same spec with lighting and space as the four new cots."
Ms Vass said: "Fundraising for the Cots for Tots Appeal has been a bit of a trigger for this. We knew for some time that we wanted to expand and Cots for Tots was the foundation."
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