The Maternity Unit at the General Hospital, which has not had any significant work completed during the last 25 years, is undergoing a £6.5 million ‘long-overdue’ renovation from Monday.
The work will include extra en-suite facilities and an isolation unit for infected patients.
Dana Scott, head of midwifery, said the changes would ‘absolutely’ respond to a review by the Health and Social Security Scrutiny Panel, which identified inadequate facilities and inconsistency of care as some of the service’s issues in a July report. The report said significant work was needed, despite some progress having been made.
Ms Scott also sought to reassure women and families that disruption during the refurbishment would not impact on the care provided. She said: ‘The work will be transformational in modernising the facilities and is a planned maintenance backlog project working within the footprint of the existing unit. I’d like to reassure Islanders that while this work will be disruptive at times, there will not be any significant impact on services.’
The refurbishment will take place over 11 phases, with the first ending in February next year, and is expected to be completed by October 2023.
The first phase includes the provision of a High Dependency Unit for infected patients, which would be isolated from the rest of the ward. This was already planned before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, according to Peter Gaforth, a practice director at Morris Architects, who are working on the refurbishment. But he added that the unit would help in the accommodation of Covid-19 patients.
Midwife Jan Auffret said she did not think there had been ‘shortcomings’ in infection control, but there had been ‘some significant challenges’ to meet standards with the current infrastructure.
She said she was ‘excited’ that the the new unit would be a ‘midwifery-led’ model of care, which offered women ‘so much more choice’ about where to give birth.
Responding to the Scrutiny report last month, the NSPCC said it was ‘particularly heartening to see perinatal mental health at the forefront of its recommendations, which must now be acted on swiftly’.
Ms Scott said the new unit would improve the maternity process for women and their families, and provide better facilities for partners to stay over.
Kate Southern, general manager of women, children and family care, said the refurbishment was needed as some systems were becoming redundant ‘that we have got to replace’. She highlighted the ‘essential’ nurse call system they currently use, which the manufacturer no longer makes parts for.
