Departments and hospital information

Visiting rules

For your visitors, we currently ask that only grandparents and siblings visit between 12pm – 3pm and 5pm – 7pm. Visiting rules may change throughout your baby’s stay with us due to COVID-19, but we will keep you informed of any changes. You as parents are able to come onto the unit any time during the day or night. If you have any questions about visiting, please ask the nurse looking after your baby.

Hospital facilities

We have a small kitchen in the parents area where you have access to a fridge and cupboard space to store food. There are also two microwaves: one available for sterilising expressing equipment and/or bottle; and then another for heating up food. There is donated food and hot drinks kept in the cupboards, supplied by The Early Birth Association (our local neonatal charity). Also on the unit, there are two rooms available for those who would like to ‘room-in’ with their babies, usually for a night or two before your baby is discharged. We have an expressing room available for those who would prefer to not express milk at the cot-side.

On the hospital site, there are Ronald McDonald rooms available. These are facilities that are funded by the Ronald McDonald charity and are there to keep families close with their babies and children when they are in hospital. These rooms are therefore shared between us and the Royal Alexander Children’s Hospital, and are prioritised for those families who do not live locally. If you are eligible, we will refer you to the team who manage the rooms. It may be that there is a waiting list but we will let you know as soon as a room becomes available. If you require one of these rooms, there is a £25 deposit. If you need financial support with this deposit, then please let one of the nursing team aware.

Who is who

On our neonatal unit, we have a combination of different medical, nursing and allied health professionals.

From the medical team, you will see the:

• Consultant Neonatologist
• Registrar (senior doctor)
• Senior House Officer [SHO] (junior doctor)
• Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (these can be working at the same level as senior and junior doctors)
• Medical students

From the nursing team, you will meet:

• Matron (the nurse in charge of the entire management of the unit)
• Senior Sister (these are senior nurses who are usually the ‘nurse in charge’ of the shift and they also manage the nursing staffing)
• Senior Nurse (a nurse who has done extra training in intensive care or is more experienced in special care)
• Nurse
• Nurse Associate/Nursery Nurses (team members who have done additional training to look after patients and work alongside nursing colleagues)
• Student Nurses/Nurse Associates
• Research Nurses (nurses who help with research trials we are involved with)
• Specialist Nurses (nurses who lead in different areas of nursing, such as: infant feeding; family integrated care; bereavement; special care lead)

From the allied health professionals, you may meet:

• Speech and Language Therapist (they can help with oral feeding concerns)
• Physiotherapist (they can help with both motor and developmental aspects)