Paediatrics
The Children’s Unit
The Children’s Unit at Tameside & Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust comprises of 36 Beds; these are divided into Inpatient Services, Day Case, and an Observation & Assessment Unit. All Nurses on the Ward hold paediatric nursing qualifications and the unit provides services for Children and Young People up to 16 years of age, with a variety of medical and surgical conditions.
The Unit has been designed and built specifically for children and young people and we provide Play, Adolescent and Sensory Rooms. The Unit also provides support and care to Children and Young People with mental health illness who are supported by Health Minds (previously CAMHS).
We work closely with other services and specialties to ensure we continually provide a high standard of care. The unit is currently involved in various research projects overseen by the LCRN-Greater Manchester (The Local Clinical Research Network).
Family centred care is provided, where we actively encourage families/carers to be involved; we are able to provide facilities to parents and carers who wish to remain resident. Also, all inpatient areas provide parent beds and toilet facilities.
We actively encourage and promote learning for our staff. We encourage continued personal development and education and have close links with local universities to support this. We have Auxiliary Nurses, who have completed their induction and continue to access teaching in developing new skills appropriate to Paediatrics.
The Observation and Assessment Unit (O&A)
The Observation and Assessment Unit is open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and is focused on rapid assessment leading to either admission to the inpatient area, or to being discharged home.
The Unit is staffed by experienced Paediatric Nurses, who are able to support our patients from admission to discharge.
The Children’s Outpatient Department
The Children’s Outpatient Department is purpose built and designed for Children and Young People. Within the department we have Paediatric Nurse Led Clinics in the following areas:
- Phlebotomy
- Transfusion Services
- Allergy Testing
- Pre-Operative Assessments
- Diabetic Blood Service
Many specialty clinics are also held within the department, including:
- Orthopaedic
- Epilepsy
- Neurophysiology
- ENT
- Dietician
- Gynaecology
- Dermatology
- Cardiology
- General paediatrics
- Asthma
- Urology
- Specialist Paediatrics
- Diabetes
- Endocrine
- Genetic
The department is also supported by Phlebotomy, Play and Support Workers, Administration staff and staff from the General Outpatient’s Department, who support the ENT and Orthopaedic clinics.
The Children’s Community Nursing Team
This is a well established team, that provides ‘care closer to home’ for children and young people. The team is based within the new Children’s Outpatients’ Department at Tameside Hospital and provides nursing care for all children aged 0 to 19 years old in the local community of Tameside and Glossop.
The team is responsive to the needs of the local community and has a co-ordinator role giving access to a senior nurse between the hours of 10am and 6pm Monday to Sunday. The team runs clinics each afternoon, offering a service to non-acutely ill children for such things as wound checks, burns dressings, BP recordings and long term condition management.
The team is comprised of 15 experienced paediatric nurses who care for children in the home/community setting with a wide range of clinical specialties: medical, surgical, oncology, cardiology and neonatal.
The team works from 8am to 8pm each day of the year and accept referrals from all members of the multidisciplinary team. The team also provides an on-call service for children and young people requiring end of life care at home.
The team is part of a multidisciplinary approach to preventing and avoiding hospital admission here at Tameside Acute NHS Trust, and has built up strong links with the local GP community, working together to look after children ‘closer to home’.
The Paediatric Diabetes Team
This well established team maintains excellent links between patient and family; hospital and GP; inpatient and outpatient departments; school and with the Young Person’s Clinic for young adults leaving the paediatric service.
We also work closely with our colleagues in the Psychology Department; Children’s Outpatients; Children’s Ward and Observation Unit nurses, doctors, paediatric secretaries; and the Children’s Community Nursing Team and play therapists.
We work hard to help children and their families manage their diabetes effectively and appropriately, in a supportive and holistic manner, taking into account the way they want to live their lives and the things they want to do as much as is possible.
We aim to be supportive, not critical or judgmental. We also aim to be available for advice; in person or by phone, throughout the week. At any time a young person or family can obtain advice about problems with their child’s diabetes by ringing the on-call paediatric registrar. However, during office hours advice can be sought from the diabetes team. We now offer a robust insulin pump service, which is continuing to grow and can offer insulin pumps to all children and young people, giving them choice of pumps with the latest technology. We refer to NICE guidance for our pump criteria when selecting children and young people.
We aim to teach children and their families the skills and knowledge they need to manage their diabetes well. We regularly liaise with our colleagues in different paediatric diabetes services across the North West to ensure we are providing best practice. We are part of the North West Paediatric Diabetes Network where we share ideas and develop best ways of improving diabetes services nationally. We prepare our young people from the age of 12 about transition to adult services and we try and prepare them as well as possible for life as young adults.
The Paediatrics Community Medical Service
This community based service provides specialist medical input into the management of children with specific vulnerabilities or needs such as children with disabilities, children with special educational needs, and ‘Looked After’ children.
The audiology service and the medical responsibility for Adoption and Fostering are also provided by this service. We provide school and clinic based services and we liaise closely with colleagues in education and social care. We have strong links with the multiagency/multidisciplinary Integrated Service for Children with Additional Needs.
Our team consists of one full time Consultant, one part Community/part Acute Consultant, two Associate Specialist Paediatricians, and one Staff Grade Paediatrician; we are consistently supported by a dedicated Administrative team.
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
All parents hope that their babies will be healthy. However, sometimes newborn babies need to be admitted to the Neonatal Unit for observation or treatment. This may be due to being born prematurely, having a difficult delivery, or antenatal concerns. We understand that this is a stressful time for families and we aim to support them throughout their baby’s stay and encourage parents to become involved in their baby’s care.
The Neonatal Unit
Over 270 newborn babies are admitted to our unit each year. We work closely with the Maternity Department to provide a friendly, supportive perinatal service for pregnant women and their babies. We provide short term intensive care, high dependency care and special care for babies within the North West Neonatal Network.
Transfer between units
Babies less than 27 weeks gestation or very sick babies will need to be transferred to a tertiary neonatal unit which can provide longer term intensive care or more specialised care, such as surgery. If a baby needs to move to another hospital, the Northwest Neonatal Transport Service provides a dedicated service for this.
Transitional Care and Neonatal Outreach
We aim to keep babies with their mothers wherever possible and work closely with the postnatal ward to provide a Transitional Care facility. We also have a Neonatal Outreach team of community nursing staff to facilitate safe early discharge home.
The Newborn Hearing Service
The Newborn Hearing screening services offers all babies a hearing screen at birth. Babies who are not screened as an inpatient can attend our weekly drop-in clinic which is held in the Children’s Outpatient Department on the Tameside Hospital site.
The Play Team
The Play Team consists of hospital Play Specialists and Play Workers. The Team works in the Ward area and in the Children’s Outpatient Department and are also available to offer support and advice in other areas within the hospital.
They are trained to support in the distraction of children and have specialist knowledge of children, in particular their needs in hospital. Daily duties include psychological and pre/post procedural play to prepare and distract children and young people for surgical and medical procedures such as pre-operational clinics/visits, theatre, blood tests and x-rays.
The Play Team endeavour to ensure that all children and young people’s experiences are positive in nature, with the aim of alleviating fears and anxieties throughout their hospital journey.
Epilepsy is the most common neurological condition, defined as a tendency to have recurrent seizures (sometimes called ‘fits’). Seizures are caused by a sudden burst of excess electrical activity in the brain, causing a temporary disruption in messages passed between the brain cells. This disruption can cause messages to be mixed up or stopped.
What is experienced in a seizure will depend on where in the brain the epileptic activity begins and how widely and rapidly it spreads. For this reason there are many different types of seizures and each person will experience epilepsy in a way that is unique to them.
The Paediatric Epilepsy Service involves a Consultant Paediatrician with a special interest in Epilepsy, Paediatric Epilepsy Specialist Nurse and Paediatric Neurologist.
We work in partnership with parents/carers, within a multi-agency team for children and young people aged 0-19 years who have a diagnosis of epilepsy.
The service aims to:
- Establish a correct diagnosis, working in partnership with the Paediatric Neurologist
- Provide an ongoing epilepsy management plan including treatment
- To work in partnership with parents, children and young people at all times
- Offer support in the home environment
- Provide advice/information and counselling about epilepsy and treatments
- Provide information on medication and side effects
- Provide nurse-led clinics
- Provide information on safety/first aid and training on rescue medication
- Support in school (individualised care plans) and address any issue of concern (only with parental consent)
- Provide information on lifestyle issues
- Provide information about support groups and voluntary organisations
- Provide training and education to others involved in your care
- Hope for Paediatric Epilepsy (HOPE) is a support group for parents with children and young people who have epilepsy
The Benefits
- Mutual support through contact with other parents of children and young people with epilepsy
- Building relationships
- Sharing knowledge and information
- Gaining knowledge and information
- Building confidence
- Sharing difficult and challenging situations can be encouraging – knowing that you are not alone!
- Opportunity to help other parents and families
- The chance to influence service provision for children and young people with epilepsy within Tameside
The support group is an informal meeting for parents and carers. We occasionally invite different agencies and speakers to talk to us about all topics around childhood epilepsies.
The Advanced Paediatric Nurse Practitioners (APNP)
A team of skilled children’s nurses who work within the Accident and Emergency department providing consistent, high quality, holistic emergency care for children and young people. The aim of the service is to ensure children and young people are not admitted to inpatient areas if their care can be delivered safely and effectively at home.
The practitioners aim to improve patient access to appropriate and relevant health care and to offer advice and information to empower children, young people and their families to actively promote their own health. Thereby, reducing further attendance in the emergency department.
Interested in joining the team?
Use the button below to register your interest and a member of our team will be in touch
