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Editor

Brighton’s Children’s and the NPH- Similar??

 The NPHDB  appointed BDP with lead architect Benedict Zucchi with Irish partners O’Connell Mahon Architects.

Mr. Zucchi said on radio interview on appointment  in Oct. 2014 “The children’s hospital in Brighton was of a similar scale, nature and complexity to the new children’s hospital; both facilities co-located with an adult hospital, in an urban setting….”

A brief look at Brighton’s Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital website  gives a very different picture. it is neither a national or a regional hospital. It has fewer than 100 beds (including 25 day beds). Pathology, MRI, CT, Nuclear Medicine are in the adjacent adult hospital. There is no parking for ambulances at the Emergency Dept., seriously ill or injured children are brought instead to the adult Emergency Dept. and then internally transferred. There are no ENT or Ophthmology clinics, no maternity or neonatology. Paediatric Audiology is in the Adult hospital.  Parking is “very limited” with a warning “there are often long queues” for the multi-story car park.

The scale, clinical complexity and nature  of Ireland’s NCH is very different, contrary to Mr. Zucchi’s opinion. The NCH is projected to cost €650m, the Alex cost £36m.

Please, Mr Zucchi – spare us.

Editor

No End-of-Life facility

“Some Paediatric Academic Health Science centres(PAHSC) (e.g. Boston Children’s Hospital) have recently built a palliative care facility for end-of-life care, where the dying patient is cared for by the family in a ‘home-like setting  but within the PAHSC ‘.  SickKids does not have the capacity at present for such a unit but if building a new hospital, this facility would be incorporated.”

Hugh O’Brodovich, the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, quoted in the RKW Report, Part 2C. p178.

The new Melbourne Children’s Hospital has such a ‘home from home’ facility for those who wish to use it. None is planned for the National Paediatric Hospital at St. James’s Hospital.

 

Editor

Parkland -NONE

The new stand-alone Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital  at the 280 acre Royal Park. “Parkland provides one of the most powerful forces in lifting a child’s spirits and aiding recovery and the new hospital will be flanked byopen space on three sides.” Steve Bracks, Premier of the State of Victoria, Australia, announcing the site for the new Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital  (opened 2011)
The  new stand-alone Alder Hey children’s hospital on the 24 acre Springfield Park  in Liverpool -” rebranded as ‘Alder Hey in the Park’  …the parkland will be used creatively as an integral part of the ‘clinical space’, to deliver rehabilitation to our patients”. – opening shortly, 2015.
By contrast the proposed, site-constrained, new National Children’s Hospital at St. James’s will have no ground level gardens. Its  ” roof top” garden is in a central well, being on the roof of the 4th floor of the hospital, completely surrounded by a further three storeys of the hospital.
Editor

NPH still saying NO to adolescents –

Shamefully, the NPH  will NOT change the upper admission age limit (eve of 16th birthday) despite Report recommendations and numerous requests from  child advocacy groups.
Below is one such  from the organisation ” Children in Hospital Ireland” submission to the NPH -read full text here
“The new National Paediatric Hospital must cater for the admission of child patients up to (at a minimum) the age of 18 years.  Bed numbers must reflect this.  At present many of the adult hospitals in the Greater Dublin region admit children aged between twelve and 14 years upwards. The three children’s hospitals do not routinely admit children over 15 or 16 years of age who have not been attending the hospital on an ongoing basis. This is significant in that current calculations on bed requirements rely an upper age limit of 15 or 16years, broadly in line with current practices. However, in the new NationalPaediatric Hospital, these admission practices must change in line with the definition of children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the EACH Charter and in  line with Government policy and recent Irish Legislation.
The new National Paediatric Hospital bed capacity must reflect this admissions policy and practice.”
Editor

The Ideal Site – Connolly

The Rotunda move must be heralded as a huge game-changer both for Connolly Hospital and for the NPH.  With 145 acres on the M50 central spine of the Greater Dublin Area(GDA), and with the populations of Swords and Blanchardstown each expected to increase to >100,000  over the next decade, the NPH at the Connolly campus  would be critically placed to serve the Secondary Care needs of the children of the GDA and the Tertiary Care needs of the children of Ireland.
Beaumont hospital, we understand, looks forward to moving neurosurgery and other surgical specialties to the Connolly campus. The addition of a helipad will allow a Level One Trauma Centre for the country- for both adult and children- to develop.  Access, parking, environment , expansion space, low planning risk, green parkland- with peripheral residental areas at some remove- make this an ideal site to welcome both our secondary and tertiary care patients.  Blanchardstown Shopping Centre and  the Central Biotechnology Science park are close by.

Now is the time to carefully plan the future lay out and interconnectedness of Clinical, Educational and Research facilities on this 21st century campus.

Editor

The latest on St. James’s

The Cabinet was mislead in its decision about location both on clinical grounds and on decanting/access/cost grounds.

  • No mention in the Dolphin report of requirement for the following which are now planned :-

1)New  Entire Campus  Energy Plant – on 3rd level below the 2 levels of car parking.

2)New entrance ( which will end on the lower level of the children’s carpark) to the campus at Mt. Brown. This requires removing most of the hill between O’Reilly Ave. and Cameron Sq. This entrance will carry all service and delivery vehicles for the Entire  St. James’s Campus as well as acting as a second entrance /exit for the children’s hospital carpark.

3)To facilitate Service deliveries, part of the second level of children’s car parking will be taken as the  Deliveries  Area for the entire campus, compromising further the woefully inadequate car spaces for children and causing more trouble for residents on surrounding roads.

4)To facilitate the new Mt. Brown entrance, ware houses at  St. James’s are being demolished and storage warehouses are being leased ‘in Crumlin’. This leased depot will in the future be the collection point from which service vehicles will daily ferry goods for the Entire St. James’s campus via the Mt.Brown entrance.

5)The Drimnagh sewers ,which run through the proposed area for the underground carpark, require to be rerouted. Cost €18million??

6) The footprint of the children’s hospital has extended onto the expansion space proposed in  St. James’s submission  to the Doplhin Review to be reserved. Expansion space is now a joke, being restricted, we are informed at the Family Forum at the NPHDB offices, to what is currently, and grandly, named the ‘Meadow Gardens’ at the north end of the building. Goodbye dear Meadow Gardens.

  • Local residents rightly fear subsidence, overshadowing, further sewerage problems, noise, loss of privacy, and a significant escalation in their already difficult access and parking problems.
  •  Businesses in Inchicore are very concerned about increased traffic congestion on Mt. Brown and the Old Kilmainham road.
  • And what about the cost of the satellite units?
  • And what about the Maternity Hospital? Where and when?. Minister Reilly’s and Minister Varadkar’s “ultimately”  is horrifying.

We could go on and on. Could someone in our parliament please act responsibly and stop this gross abuse of taxpayers’ money and abuse of children right now. Go, together with the Rotunda Maternity hospita,l  to the 143 acres at Connolly Hospital. We are in the 21st century.

Editor

Co-location, a ‘Repetition Bias’ fallacy

Started by the HSE in 2006, and repeated again and again, the dogma that the NPH requires Adult Hospital colocation, is an example of  a ‘Cognitive Bias’.  It is recognised in psychology that if something is repeated again and again, it gains traction and belief, even in the absence of any evidence.  Psychologists call this cognitive phenomenon ‘Repetition Bias’.

There is NO EVIDENCE in the medical literature that co-location is,  as the Government, the HSE and the NPHDB would have people believe,  a “paramount” requirement,  NO EVIDENCE that adult hospital co-location results in better clinical outcomes for children.

NCHA says  – The victim of ‘Repetition Bias’, the Cabinet was mistaken in believing its decision on 6th Nov 2012, to build the NPH at St. James’s, “has been led by clinical considerations”.

NCHA says -change the site, please get it right- for our CHILDREN.  Go to what is now the central spine of the Greater Dublin Area,  the M50. Build beside the Connolly hospital, at the M50/N3 interchange -accessible, spacious, cheaper, quicker, a 143 acre shovel-ready site, with huge future potential. Build the 21st century Rotunda maternity hospital there at the same time. The children of the whole country will be cheering.