A facility set to open at Crumlin will help children with long-term illnesses to make the transition from intensive care to home, writes Barry O'Keeffe
A new unit in Dublin, which helps children in need of long-term intensive care to make the transition from hospital to home, is expected to be fully operational early in the new year.
The unit, which will be based at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, is the first step-down facility for children who are in hospital and require long-term intensive care due to chronic or respiratory illness. A similar unit is being developed in Temple Street hospital.
The unit will cater for up to four children who are being prepared to transfer from hospital to their own homes, with a further bed allocated for respite care for children suffering from similar conditions. It will cost in excess of €1.5 million to establish and run.
Dr Billy Casey, consultant anaesthetist at Our Lady's, told The Irish Times that the unit would be far more family friendly and family orientated than the previous intensive care unit and, apart from nursing staff, would provide a range of medical and clinical advisers to parents and children.
Casey predicted that there would be strong demand in the future for such a unit. "We have more and more premature babies coming through, who will have chronic lung diseases."
He also predicted that up to six patients a year would pass through the unit - not many by ordinary standards.
However, Casey pointed out that most of them would be six months to one year in the transitional care unit.
He mentioned one case of a child who had been in the intensive care unit for two years because he had nowhere else to go.
The children have varying degrees of respiratory problems. One child, a quadriplegic, spends 80 per cent of his life on a ventilator.
The unit helps parents to cope with children who have severe respiratory problems and helps them to prepare themselves, their families and their homes to care for their children.
"In the long term, it allows for more social and physical development of patients," he said.
Casey said children who transfer to the unit develop better from day one, learning to feed themselves and integrating with others. He said some of the children, who are very young - often between a few months and two years old - may have spent up to a year on a ventilator, 24 hours a day in some cases.
A number of donors have been involved in setting up the unit in a building at Crumlin which is undergoing refurbishment.
The Government donated about €1 million, contributing a further €500,000 towards the running costs. Yoplait donated money as part of a fundraising drive last month, raising in excess of €10,000, and some US donors have also been involved.
Studies have shown that such transitional care units free up beds in hospitals, as the patients do not have to occupy them for as long.
Casey said that although transitional care units provided the highest standards of care, they were less costly in the long run.
"There is still a very high level of monitoring, but the nursing ratio is lower, with one nurse to every two patients, whereas in intensive care it is one nurse to one patient."
Casey said one major issue had been trying to get the appropriate nurses trained in the areas in which the children lived.
He urged anyone interested in undergoing such training to contact the unit at Crumlin.