Whilst the rest of the city are putting their feet up this Christmas, the heroic staff at York Hospital’s Children’s Ward and Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) —who provide specialist care for premature and sick newborn babies— will be working tirelessly to bring joy to all their little patients and the families who aren’t quite as fortunate.
Coronation Babies
The Special Care Baby Unit had more to celebrate on Saturday the 6th of May than just the coronation of King Charles III. At 6:05pm Betsy Maeve Wadsworth, alongside 11 others throughout the day, was born at York Hospital.
In fitting style, instead of hats the babies were gifted knitted crowns by their midwife Sue Cowley and a vest designed by Sue’s daughter, Iona.
Betsy’s mum Katie said, “We received the most wonderful gift bag containing a coronation baby vest, a gorgeous hand-knitted hat, some coronation socks, and chocolates. What an amazing treat from York’s maternity unit.”
Unlike King Charles’ purely ceremonial crown, these knitted crowns provide a truly vital service. For the first 24 hours of their lives, some babies can struggle to regulate their body temperature— the knitted crowns prevented their temperatures from ever getting too low.
Babies Ward introduce revolutionary new software
May of 2023 saw the first births ever to be recorded on BadgerNet, a ground-breaking paperless software.
The software has created the first ever virtual system for midwives to register their maternity notes— the notes they take during appointments over the course of a pregnancy— replacing the old-fashioned method of using green paper to take those notes. By moving into a virtual system, each baby and mother’s pregnancy record is immediately available for midwives, healthcare assistants, admin teams, consultants, and sonographers and is almost completely immune to human error since staff no longer need to double enter data.
It comes with a corresponding app for patients where they can access any information recommended by their midwife, view booked appointments, write a personal diary, and add photos at the simple press of a button— all from the comfort of their home.
Jo Holleran, Digital Midwife, said “Not only is it better for patients, but it has also made a huge difference to our own staff — being able to log blood pressure or pulse oximetry readings is useful. It also saves so much time, midwives do not have to double enter data onto paper handheld notes as well as an internal system. We can also see feedback regarding antenatal care, labour, and birth experiences which is invaluable.”
Every year, staff on the children’s wards at the York and Scarborough hospitals work hard to make all the necessary care arrangements so that patients can go home to their families for Christmas. However, for some patients, this is just not possible because they are too unwell. For these patients, staff do all they can to make the children’s wards feel less like hospital for the day and try to give them as close to the Christmas they would have had at home as possible.
All the young patients who need to stay in the hospital this Christmas deserve to experience as much joy as any child. You can help the incredible staff bring some Christmas magic to the wards by giving the gift of joy to patients.
This includes a special visit from Santa in the run-up to Christmas, and a wonderful Christmas party to give patients and their families time to celebrate. The Play Team even organise gifts for each child on the ward, to help make the day extra special.
A gift of £20 could buy a present for a child who is too unwell to spend Christmas at home with their family. To donate go to www.bit.ly/yschristmasmagic
Please note, that the charity cannot accept donated items due to infection control guidance, but a donation of £20 will go a long way to making this Christmas special for a child who is spending it in hospital.
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