39 specialties with advanced facilities
There are many reasons why the campus of St James’s Hospital was selected as the location for the new children’s hospital, but the primary one is that it will best support the delivery of better clinical outcomes for children and young people. It is recognised international best practice* from a clinical perspective to locate children’s hospitals on the same campus as an adult teaching hospital and a maternity hospital – this is known as ‘tri-location’.
St James’s Hospital is Ireland’s largest and leading adult teaching and research-intensive hospital. It has the greatest number of clinical specialties and national services in the acute adult hospital system. It also has the widest range of adult sub-specialties that can support paediatric services, ensuring patients with conditions whose prevalence does not warrant paediatric-only consultants, get the best support. There are many specialists that work between both adult and children’s hospitals already and this is likely to increase once the new children’s hospital opens. The tri location of the new children’s hospital and in time, the re-located Coombe maternity hospital on a shared campus with St. James’s Hospital will create a centre of medical expertise to support research, innovation and education.
*The Dolphin Report 2012. / Mc Kinsey Report: Ministerial National Paediatric Hospital Independent Review 2011 (Part 2): Clinical Analysis/ The Bristol Inquiry 2001/ The Scottish Review of Paeditric services 2004.
The new hospital will have state-of-the-art operating theatres, including specialised theatres for heart surgery, neurosurgery and orthopaedics. The theatre areas will have dedicated rooms for emergency and general surgical procedures, as well as, interventional theatres. These facilities will be well positioned to adapt to predicted developments in radiology and other surgical advancements. The theatre will have an MRI scanner for scans during operations so children undergoing surgery can have highly specialised imaging during their surgery, greatly helping surgeons. All of these clinical areas will be designed and built based on international health standards and guidelines.