 The children’s services at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital are among the best in the country - three out of four respondents to a young patient’s survey (Picker Institute’s Young Patients Survey, 2008) rated the overall quality of care received as either ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’. The Hospital has also pioneered many new and innovative services including the use of laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery in children.
The Hospital has recently won a bid to be a lead centre for paediatric surgery in North West London. This will further build on their existing role as the major regional provider of children’s surgery.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and Paediatric services:
· provide specialist medical and surgical care for premature babies
· is the designated NICU in North West London for neonatal surgery
· takes referrals from all over South East England
· admitted 528 babies in 2007, many of them requiring surgical care
· supports every stage of the child’s development, from birth to adolescence
· is the most comprehensive body of child health expertise in West London
· considers surgery to be a key part of its commitment to comprehensive children’s services.
About the Paediatric Theatre
 The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a major provider of children’s services. It has one of the largest paediatric emergency departments in London which offers 24/7 cover by a full complement of paediatric nurses and doctors. It treats in excess of 30,000 children a year. Between 1994 and 2006, the number of operations performed by the paediatric surgeons in the children’s theatre has grown by over 300 per cent to just over 5,000 per annum.
The comprehensive range of acute, elective and community services the Hospital provides means that babies, children and young people treated at the Hospital benefit from a fully integrated multidisciplinary package of care from birth through to, where needed, adulthood. The overall approach of the children’s services is both family and child centred.
The quality of child health services at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has resulted in an increase in admissions to all paediatric departments from London and the surrounding regions. However, NHS funding does not fund sufficient resources for the neonatal and paediatric surgical departments to meet this ever increasing need.
Approximately two thirds of babies in neonatal intensive care require surgery. Currently, the Hospital has two paediatric operating theatres for premature babies and children. To complement these theatres, the Hospital has confirmed plans to build new pioneering surgical theatres, incorporating a highly complex design and surgical equipment. The new paediatric theatres will develop innovative surgical procedures and help to reduce waiting lists and urgent A&E surgeries.
The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s NHS funding will pay for the salary, running costs and the construction of the new paediatric theatre. It does not have sufficient funds to meet the costs of pioneering surgical equipment. The skilled surgical team wish to purchase a high-tech “da Vinci” robot or one similar which uses the latest advances in technology to cut and manipulate tissue in the same way as a surgeon. Use of such a robot achieves even greater surgical precision and can reduce both pain and blood loss. This also contributes to a shorter hospital stay for the child patient and faster rates of recovery.
The installation of a surgical robot at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is likely to be the first such machine in southern England dedicated to paediatric surgery.
To find out more about the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Children Services, click here. Photos courtesy of NHS Choices/Vicki Couchman
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