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University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust

Children's Health Services

The child health department provides a service for children and families across East Dorset from a central base at Poole Hospital.

The unit provides expert paediatric treatment and assessment for children referred via the emergency departments at both Bournemouth and Poole Hospitals, GPs from across the whole of East Dorset, the out of hours services across East Dorset and other health professionals who require specialist support. The unit provides comprehensive care for medical, surgical and orthopaedic conditions.

The child health department is made up of the children’s unit, outpatient clinics, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), children’s community nursing team (CCN), children’s therapy service and the child development centre (CDC). It is situated on the first floor of the main building and the children’s therapy service is based in the child development centre, along with the CDC team members.

The CCN team is based on Elmwood children’s day care and assessment unit – this gives the team easy access to the paediatric consultants and junior medical staff.

Neonatal care is located within St. Mary’s Maternity Unit. It provides care for babies born at Poole and Bournemouth maternity units and referrals are accepted from neighbouring districts needing intensive, high dependency or special care.

More information

Click on the links below to find out more about the individual wards and departments which make up the child health unit:

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