Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Our neonatal intensive care unit provides specialist care to sick term and preterm (premature) newborn babies, based within Princess Anne Hospital.

Our state-of-the-art, purpose-built unit has been specially designed as a bright, welcoming and spacious environment for babies and their families.

We have 23 intensive and high dependency cots and 14 special care cots. Each cot has monitoring equipment and is colour-coded to give each baby their own place.

Parent and carer facilities are available on the unit funded through Southampton Hospitals Charity, as well as within the hospital site.

As one of the largest neonatal units in the country, we treat around 900 babies a year, from across the south and the Channel Islands.

You can see a virtual tour of our unit here.

 

How Charity support has impacted the hospital

  • We fund vCreate so parents can get regular photo and video updates of their baby/babies if they cannot be in the unit with them. Over 1,000 families have used the platform, with staff taking around 800 videos a month, and four photos a day per baby!
  • Our new and modernised ambulance will help deliver enhanced care for babies and children needing emergency treatment at Oxford and Southampton hospitals. This includes the Southampton Oxford Neonatal Transport (SONeT) service for babies and the Southampton Oxford Retrieval Team (SORT) for all infants and children (up to the age of 16).
  • Specialist trolleys for use in the road ambulances to transport babies, and a special air ambulance incubator.
  • The refurbishment of the day room, parents’ rooms, plus the shower facilities on the unit.
  • Specialist training for staff to provide world-class care for babies.
  • Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) is a serious birth complication that affects 1 in 1,000 babies in the UK every year. We’ve already funded research into HIE, but now we are expanding this to further understand the impact of neonatal brain injuries on families.