Nurses Day! - Birmingham Children's Hospital

Case study
Worcestershire
teenager,
Jonathan
Beale,
was diagnosed with epilepsy in October 2011 after ongoing investigations into the
cause of his long-term dyslexia and blackouts.
Since then his condition has been controlled with drugs but his last two brain
scans showed that an abnormality was getting slightly bigger. It was then that
Jonathan decided he wanted it removed so he could lead a normal teenage life,
start driving lessons and become a joiner.
Consultant neurosurgeons, Richard Walsh and Desiderio Rodrigues used a
high-tech navigation system to pinpoint the exact location of the abnormality and
safely remove it without causing damage to his brain.
Patients are usually awake and talking just a few hours after surgery and the
majority are back home within a week. There is over an 80% chance that after a
year Jonathan will never experience seizures again.
Jonathan said: “Despite my parents being a bit anxious about it, it wasn’t a hard
decision for me to take to have the surgery, as I knew this thing in my head was
stopping me lead a normal life.
“Until I’ve got a clean bill of health from the doctors I won’t be able to apply for
my provisional licence, or operate machinery without supervision on my college
course. I hope the surgery has done the job and I can get back to living a normal
life with my friends and family.”
At Birmingham Children’s Hospital we also
specialise in heart surgery, particularly the most
complex conditions thanks to the pioneering skills
of our cardiac surgeons and specialist nursing
teams who help care for so many babies, children
and young people from across the UK each year.
Our £4.9m angiography and hybrid theatre suite
is supporting this by enabling our surgeons to
perform surgery that would have previously
required two operations, in just one, which
drastically reduces the impact of surgery on
children and their families and helps us see more
patients too.
Looking forward, we know we face a population
which is growing and we know that more children
and young people will need our help for more
l 11 PICU beds
l 7 PICU beds (£500k)
l 2 Theatres (£2.3m)
l Cancer Unit (£2m)
l Heart Investigations
Unit (£2m)
l Parkview
development (£10m)
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complex conditions in the future too. We’re
committed to continuing to deliver high quality
care in the present while we plan for the future
and have this year expanded capacity in our
PICU to 31 beds (26 now open and 31 by 2014)
and vastly improved our facilities across the
hospital for our patients and families.
In December our Board of Directors also agreed
an estates strategy (below) which will ensure
that between now and 2020, when we plan to
have a new hospital, we have the space, facilities
and staff to care for more patients. This includes
more PICU and inpatient beds, two new theatres,
a new West Midlands Cancer Centre and
developments at our Child and Adolescent Mental
Health Service (CAMHS) at Parkview.
Now Short Medium Long
31 PICU beds 38 PICU beds 49 PICU beds 50-58 PICU beds
l 38 inpatient beds (£2m)
l 11 PICU beds (£2m)
l HDU/LTV (£1.7m)
New Hospital:
l 15 theatres + 4 high spec
treatment rooms
l Single room accommodation
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