IRELAND is on the cusp of getting a new children’s hospital that children, young people, their parents and the staff from the existing Dublin based children’s hospitals – Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght – need and deserve.
We are currently waiting for final approval from the Government to commence construction of the state-of-the-art hospital on a campus shared with St James’s Hospital, which secured planning permission from An Bord Pleanála in April 2016. A preferred contractor has been selected and is ready to go on site.
Currently, our care for children is fragmented and poorly co-ordinated. Children, their families and staff are often required to travel between the three children’s hospitals, where the building conditions are often no longer fit for purpose. This is in no one’s best interests, least of all our sickest children.
The 50-acre site at St James’s Hospital will soon be one of the best medical campuses in Europe. Not only will it be home to St James’s Hospital – one of the country’s leading teaching and research intensive adult hospitals – it will also be the new location for the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital. That is the optimal service model – a maternity, children’s and adult hospital all located on the one campus.
It means newborns needing urgent medical care can be transferred across a corridor to the new children’s hospital. Likewise, mothers can go straight to St James’s Hospital should they need further medical attention.
In a country the size of Ireland, consultants in some specialities, such as cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, dermatology, orthopaedics and ENT, will work with adults as well as children. With close access to the right kind of support from adult based services, clinical outcomes will be better for our children.
At such a difficult time for children and their families, it’s so important they have comfortable surroundings. All the 380 in-patient rooms are single and en-suite and will have a bed for a parent to sleep and stay over with their child. There will also be four acres of outdoor space and 14 gardens, including the rainbow garden with dedicated spaces for children who have a risk of infection.
The two new Paediatric Outpatients and Urgent Care Centres at Connolly Hospital and Tallaght Hospital will care for children and young people who have a common, minor illness or injury which cannot be managed by a GP on a phased basis from 2018. Only those who are critically ill or who suffer with a complex condition will be transferred to the new children’s hospital in 2021, or one of the existing hospitals in the meantime.
While there has been some debate about parking and access to the hospital, let me assure you this is well catered for: there will be 675 dedicated family parking spaces (three times what is currently available at the three Dublin children’s hospitals) and the St James’s campus will be accessible from three entry points.
We are nearly there. The site is selected; the plans are complete; planning permission is secured; the first phase of works to clear the site are well advanced; and the contractor is ready to start. We are just weeks away from starting the construction of our new children’s hospital and the two Paediatric Outpatients and Urgent Care Centres – a development that the children, families and staff need and deserve.
Dr Peter Greally is Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at the National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght, and Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin. He is Group Clinical Director of the Children’s Hospital Group
