Wards at Waikato Hospital

Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

• Location:
  Level B1, Elizabeth Rothwell building
  and Level 4, Elizabeth Rothwell building (Ward 54 nursery)
  
  
• About the ward:
  Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) - 41 cots with three levels of care.
  
  Level 3 has 15 intensive care cots catering for premature infants from 24 weeks gestation to sick term infants with a variety of life threatening conditions requiring intensive medical/nursing interventions.
  Level 2 has 14 high dependency cots catering for infants requiring low level respiratory support, support with feeding, needing medical investigations and treatment of high jaundice levels.
  
  Level 1 consists of 10 cots and the facility of two rooming – in beds for mums to stay with their baby in preparation to go home (located in Ward 54 nursery).
  
  
• Specific visiting rules:
  Parents are able to visit 24 hours. Visitors for babies must have parental permission and only durning general hospital visiting hours - 11am - 1.30pm and 4pm - 8pm daily.
  
  Two visitors per baby at a time. No children under two years old are not permitted into the nurseries unless a direct sibling and during winter months June-Oct (dates on the Unit entry door) no under two year olds are allowed in the nurseries.
  
  Cell-phones MUST be turned off in the nurseries, including use for photos, due to signal interference with medical equipment.
  
  ALL visitors must adhere to strict hand washing on entering the nursery, to reduce risk of transmitting germs to babies. Anybody who is unwell themselves e.g have a cold, should not come to visit and may be asked to leave the nursery, due to the life threartening risk to the babies.
  
  During doctors rounds and nursing handover visitors are requested to leave the nursery in order to maintain confidentiality and privacy. When individual babies are being discussed parents may be present but then asked to leave once discussion of their baby has finished.
• Background information:

• The transfer of NICU cases prior to delivery is not at all unusual in New Zealand (nor in Australia). There are six NICUs in New Zealand, each with a capacity that is generally appropriate for their population. However, as with anything in health, there are fluctuations in work load, and it is not at all uncommon for one or more centres to be at capacity on any particular day. The capacity issue tends to change rapidly, and clinicians at each of the centres must make judgements as to whether their bed status is appropriate for a new admission, or whether it would place that baby and the others in the NICU at some risk, due to excessive work load. The availability of additional beds at a centre closer rather than further away is also a factor, although once an airflight is initiated, it is not particularly important how far that flight needs to travel from the baby's perspective (it certainly is from a social perspective).

  This is sensible and judicious use of the NICU resources. If transfers out of one centre are seen to be excessive, then there is an argument for increasing that resource, although such resource increases take a considerable time to implement. As such, many of the NICUs have increased their capacity over the last 10 years, although transfers remain a regular event. It is not desirable to resource a NICU to the extent that transfers would never be required - this would be wasteful of resources, and would likely impact negatively on staff morale and skill levels.

  The next closest NICU is the first centre to be considered, but it is not uncommon for transfers to occur across a long distance. This is a factor of NZ's widely spaced geography (whereas a large centre like Sydney or Malbourne is able to maintain some better proximity for its customers).
  

back to top