A Computerised Clinical Information System

This picture shows a typical bed on the Paediatric Critical Care Unit. Each patient will be continuously monitored, on numerous medications and usually on a ventilator.

Throughout their normal working day, the doctors and nurses caring for these children have to observe and process huge amounts of information about each patient in order to make the best decisions and to guide their care.

Decisions have to be made very quickly and it can be difficult to spot vital patterns as they emerge. This may be something as simple as recognizing a new infection and prescribing appropriate antibiotics.

Computerised systems have been developed over the last 10 years that collect and analyse data about each patient on a second-by-second basis and act as a diagnostic tool, alerting staff to changes in the patient at an earlier stage.

These systems have also been shown to help reduce medication errors and flag up problems like drug allergies or interactions.

A Mobile CT scanner

A significant number of the children admitted to Paediatric Critical Care have problems that affect their brain.

Many of these will be children who have been involved in traffic accidents although there are also a number with infections, bleeding or tumours of the brain.

In order to give these children the best care, they frequently need CT scans of their head, sometimes several times during their stay on Critical Care.

Until recently there was no choice but to take these children out of the Critical Care area to the CT scanner in the X-ray department.

Moving such severely unwell patients is fraught with difficulties, and sometimes is impossible, because their condition is too unstable.

In the last few years, a portable CT scanner has been developed. This will allow us to scan children in the safety of the Critical Care area without moving them.

Other Items

In addition to our two main items, ManCCCF hopes to be able to provide ongoing support to the Paediatric Critical Care Department.

An example of this include books for the Paediatric Critical Care library.

We have also bought a digital camera and printer, allowing families to have photos of their child whilst they are unwell, something that is particularly important if they are travelling long distances to see them.