Maternity and Neonatal Redesign Programme

We are excited to be able to officially launch the Maternity and Neonatal Redesign programme!  You can read a copy of the media release here: QMC Neonatal Unit takes exciting next step in expansion plans | Latest news | NUH

We are also excited to be able to share with you the 3D flythrough video which shows how our new, expanded Neonatal Unit will look.

 

Through the Maternity and Neonatal Redesign Programme, we are taking forward plans to expand our neonatal facilities at the Queen’s Medical Centre.  The construction of the new neonatal unit which is scheduled to begin in January 2024 will take around 10 months and we hope to move into the new expanded unit in December 2024.  This will give us 21 more cots, taking the total number to 38, and will create a better working environment for our staff and more space and privacy for families.

Nottingham University Hospitals provides care for premature babies and their families at both the Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital, and we are the main Tertiary Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for this part of the East Midlands.  At the moment, pregnant women who should be able to access neonatal care for their babies at Nottingham, and some babies who are born prematurely, have to be transferred to other hospitals in the East Midlands or even further afield because we do not have enough available cots locally.  Thanks to this expansion programme, that situation will be much less likely in the future.

The expanded Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Queen’s Medical Centre will include intensive care, high dependency and low dependency cots.  The neonatal service at City Hospital will become what is known as a ‘Local Neonatal Unit’ (LNU), where babies can be supported in intensive care, before being transferred to the Queen’s Medical Centre for longer term care if needed.  The City Hospital Neonatal Unit will reduce down to eight cots so we will have an overall net increase of 13 cots.

To enable the expansion of the QMC neonatal unit, the current unit has temporarily moved to within the Nottingham’s Children Hospital Surgical Unit (NCHSU) on B floor in West Block from September 2023.   We undertook building works to ensure that NCHSU had the necessary requirements to allow the neonatal unit to continue to give the same level of medical and surgical neonatal intensive care to the babies of Nottingham and out network hospitals. 

The temporary relocation of the QMC neonatal unit has not affected the number of cots we have available for babies within Nottingham or those babies in the East Midlands requiring neonatal intensive care.  In addition, parents will continue to be welcome on the unit at any time.

A timeline of the programme can be seen below:

Progress made so far can be seen on the following video: