High-dependency units for seriously ill children are required in regional hospitals around the country, according to a Limerick-based paediatrician.
Dr Roy Philip, consultant paediatrician, Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick, was speaking at the first combined Irish Paediatric Association and Faculty scientific meeting, which began in Limerick yesterday.
About 50 research papers from Southern and Northern Ireland will be presented to delegates over the two-day event where guest speakers from Ireland and England will be updating the current clinical trends in paediatrics.
In his address yesterday on the current status of paediatric critical care in this country, Dr Philip said there was a "significant need" to develop paediatric high-dependency units in regional centres.
"All international evidence suggests that critically ill children should be cared for in a suitable environment, with appropriately qualified nurses and doctors, and then if the duration of intensive care is required, these children should be retrieved by an expert retrieval team - who are used to paediatrics - to a paediatric intensive care unit," explained Dr Philip.
"At the moment there are no structured networks of paediatric high-dependency units around the country. And we also have to develop a national paediatric retrieval transport service, like what happens for neo-natal transport," he added.
At present a critically ill child presented to any of the country's main regional hospitals is stabilised in the A&E department before being transferred to an adult intensive care unit.
"At the moment, we only have a general ward and then an adult intensive care unit. There's nothing in between called a high-dependency unit. For example in adults we have an adult intensive care unit and an adult high-dependency unit and in neo-natal we have intensive and high-dependency care but when it comes to children we don't have that structured system," explained Dr Philip.
Other speakers at the conference include Prof Gerry Loftus, chairman of the national Expert Advisory Group on Children.