ÐÇ¿ÕÌåÓý

The intensive care team is made up of:

• Nurse Managers (NM)
• Nurse Unit Managers( NUM)
• Nurse Educators (NE)
• Clinical Nurse Educators (CNE)
• Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) or Clinical Nurse Consultants (CNC)
• Registered Nurses (RN)

The nursing team is a dynamic, energetic and dedicated group, providing critical care to a complex and diverse patient population. Frontline clinicians are supported by a number of expert practitioners and hands-on clinical leadership team who provide hour-to-hour bedside care delivery.

Nurse Practitioners are experienced and knowledgeable paediatric intensive care nurses. They are expert responders to a deteriorating child and provide clinical support to both nursing and medical staff.

Nurse Practitioners have a range of clinical skills including advanced assessment, diagnostic ordering and reasoning, decision-making, prescribing, intravenous access, airway management, and team-leading acute situations.

Specialist doctors who are qualified in the care of critically ill children. They lead our intensive care medical teams and take responsibility for all aspects of your child’s medical care. They are also known as a Staff Specialist or Consultant.

All Intensivist or Intensive Care Consultants have post-graduate qualifications in paediatric intensive care with many of them holding dual qualifications as paediatricians, or in another speciality such as respiratory (breathing), anaesthetics or adult Intensive Care. 

Fellows are doctors who are senior trainees specialising in paediatric intensive care medicine and are nearing the end of their training.

They are responsible for the supervision of the registrars within the intensive care wards. 

Registrars and Residents are trainee specialist and doctors working towards specialty qualifications in paediatrics, emergency medicine, anaesthetics, intensive care medicine (adult or paediatric), and other disciplines.

Consulting staff specialists are doctors who are specialists in a specific area of the care of children e.g. a neurosurgeon or a paediatrician.

The Staff Specialist shares the responsibility of caring for your child with the Intensivist while they are in intensive care, and continues to care for them after they leave. 

The Allied Health team includes Physiotherapist, Occupational therapists, Dietitians, Speech Therapists, Social Workers, Child Life Therapists, and Clinical Pharmacists. 

Physiotherapists 

Physiotherapists work with children with a variety of conditions such as breathing difficulties, injuries, surgeries or children who require a prolonged intensive care admission that could impact a their development or strength. Physiotherapists play a central role in starting rehabilitation as soon as possible in the patient journey, often when the child is in intensive care. 

A physiotherapist can assist your child to stay strong with exercises, rehabilitative play and early return normal movement to prevent some potential long term complications.

Occupational Therapists 

• Occupational Therapists (OT) enable children to participate in activities of everyday life. When a child is unwell, their ability to participate in their usual routines and activities can be impacted. 
• The OT may review your child in the intensive care unit, this may include review of development, positioning, limb use, and ability to go to the toilet or have a shower. 
• The OT can provide therapy, education and equipment to help your child be able to remain safe and engage in activities as appropriate.

Dietitians

• Dietitians provide nutritional assessment and management to critically ill children to optimise energy and protein intake. 
• They advise on appropriate feed choice base on each child's clinical condition and requirements, recommend and adjust nutrition plans and monitor and assess growth during their admission. 

Speech Pathologists 

• Speech Pathologists provide assessment and intervention for feeding, swallowing and communication disorders. 
• This could involve assessing a patient’s readiness and safety for oral feeding, providing education about the transition from tube to oral feeds, providing strategies that promote normal oral reflexes for feeding such as oral motor exercises, dummy sucking, providing education and support about early speech and language development or assessing swallow safety and communication ability of tracheostomy patients which may include providing alternate communication and assisting with tracheostomy weaning.

Social Work

• Social Workers provide counselling and support to hospitalised children and their families. At our Hospitals, social workers can also link families to services that may help them deal with the financial, emotional and psychosocial pressures that can come with having an unwell child. 

Child Life Therapist and Music Therapy

• Child Life Therapist and Music Therapy assist children and young people to cope with the hospital environment, encourage expression of feelings related to hospital, offer experiences to promote choice and control in a situation where this is often limited, and promote the development of sick children. 

Data and Quality Managers, Administrative assistant, Ward Clerks.