Annex A > Chapter 9 - The Split Service > Comments by the UBHT

Comments by the UBHT

88 The UBHT in its written evidence to the Inquiry commented on the split site and service:

`Since the publication of the report on the Welfare of Children in Hospitals in the late 1960s/early 1970s it has been the policy within the National Health Service that children should be nursed separately from adults, wherever possible, in dedicated children's units and nursed by Registered Sick Children's Nurses. The policy of UBHT in the 1980s to move children's cardiac surgery to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children was in accordance with this policy, but in practice it was thwarted by lack of capital funding.

`It should be noted that it is often not possible in District General Hospitals to provide separate intensive care facilities for children, although in major specialist paediatric centres such as the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children, there are separate specialist paediatric intensive care units.

`As the statements of the witnesses confirm, patients and parents were shown the intensive care unit and the extensive monitoring equipment which would be attached to the patient post operatively. Assurances were given that staff were sensitive to modesty. Curtain tracks were around patients to enable procedures to be undertaken with as much privacy as possible. Patients were only accommodated in the mixed sex, adult/children's intensive care unit for the minimum period possible, following which children were transferred to a separate children's side ward.' [88]

89 Fiona Thomas, Clinical Nurse Manager, stated:

`The Bristol Royal Infirmary is adult focused compared to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children. ... The nursery on Ward 5 cared for both pre and post operative children. This would have been no different to the equivalent ward in the Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children.' [89]

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Footnotes

[88] WIT 0030 0013 UBHT

[89] WIT 0151 0012 Fiona Thomas