Paediatrics

Health and Social Care ('HSC') Trusts should publish policy and procedure for ensuring that children and young people are cared for in age-appropriate hospital settings.

Senior paediatric medical staff should hold overall patient responsibility in children's wards accommodating both medical and surgical patients.

Foundation doctors should not be employed in children's wards.

The experience and competence of all clinicians caring for children in acute hospital settings should be assessed before employment.

A consultant fixed with responsibility for a child patient upon an unscheduled admission should be informed promptly of that responsibility and kept informed of the patient's condition, to ensure senior …

The names of both the consultant responsible and the accountable nurse should be prominently displayed at the bed in order that all can know who is in charge and responsible.

The names of all on-call consultants should be prominently displayed in children's wards.

To ensure continuity, all children's wards should have an identifiable senior lead nurse with authority to whom all other nurses report. The lead nurse should understand the care plan relating …

Children's ward rounds should be led by a consultant and occur every morning and evening.

The accountable nurse should, insofar as is possible, attend at every interaction between a doctor and child patient.

Clinicians should respect parental knowledge and expertise in relation to a child's care needs and incorporate the same into their care plans.

Trusts should ensure that all healthcare professionals are made fully aware of the importance, meaning and implications of the duty of candour and its critical role in the provision of …

HSC Trusts should ensure that all nurses caring for children have facilitated access to e-learning on paediatric fluid management and hyponatraemia.

Clinicians caring for children should be trained in effective communication with both parents and children.

All Trust Boards should ensure that appropriate governance mechanisms are in place to assure the quality and safety of the healthcare services provided for children and young people.

Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority ('RQIA') should review overall compliance and consideration should be given to granting it the power to prosecute in cases of serial non-compliance or serious and …

The Department should appoint a Deputy Chief Medical Officer with specific responsibility for children's healthcare.

The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust should audit the operation of maternity and paediatric services, to ensure that they follow risk assessment protocols on place of delivery, …