Against the closure of North Tyneside Hospitals S.C.B.U.
- por: Toni Brown
- destinatário: Northumbria NHS
I discovered in March this year (2008) that they are to close North Tyneside General Hospitals Special Care Baby Unit and was disgusted by this.
I believe the reasoning behind this is that as North Tyneside General Hospital now only has a Midwifery led unit and no longer takes high risk births, it is no longer needed. But LOW RISK IS NOT NO RISK and not only could this put tiny lives at risk but it will also put added stress on lots of North Tyneside parents whose babies are in Special Care as they have to travel to Wansbeck hospital to visit their babies. Bad enough if you have a car, unimaginable if you don't.
Sadly, the Unit is now closed.
It should be reinstated. The people of North Tyneside should have the right to special care for their babies in their locality, where both they and their babies can benefit from the support of family and friends and not be forced to travel miles in order to visit their babies.
We, the undersigned, are against the closure of North Tyneside District General Hospital's Special Care Baby Unit. Which is as a direct result of North Tyneside District General Hospital becoming a Midwifery Led Unit. When this petition was started the ward was still open and there was a lot of here say and conjecture as to exactly what the closure would result in. What the final outcome has been is the loss of 4 staffed Special Care Baby Cots within Northumbria NHS, going against the governments drive to create more staffed Special Care baby cots. With no staffed Special Care Baby facilities within the district of North Tyneside. Further to that, there is no 24 hour paediatric cover at Wansbeck District Hospital and, although it is recognised that it is ran by a team of highly skilled and experienced Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practioners, it is generally felt that parents would feel more secure if they had this 24 hour cover on site.
This closure also adds to the pressure parents feel whilst having a baby in Special Care, as the distances involved mean that it is difficult for parents to come and go throughout the day, which helps them bond with and breastfeed their babies, whilst still being able to keep some normality to their lives and care for any other children they may have.
There is also the concern surrrounding the way the statistics were used in making this decision. Of the 47 babies who used the unit during the monitoring period of August-December 2007 only 18 were transfered in, it would appear that 27 were born on site. Showing that there is still a need for onsite facilities. Add to this the fact that the number of babies being cared for at the Special Care Unit at North Tyneside Hospital had only dropped by 21 from the same period in 2006, and the number using Wansbeck Hospitals Unit rose by 72, this means that there was a rise of 51 babies needing special care across the trust as a whole on the same period in 2006, which was the main contributer to the added pressure at Wansbeck Hospital. Increasing the concerns that , in spite of this Northumbria NHS choose to reduce their number of staffed Special Care cots by 4.
This is not a petition based on emotion, it is a petition based on the clinical and emotional need of expectant and new mothers in North Tyneside and the Northumbria NHS area as a whole.
We feel that, as a result of this, the decision needs to be reversed as soon as is possible.
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