Paediatrics

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Paediatrics

The service aims to provide excellent medical care to children across the area and is the largest paediatric department in the West Midlands.

The main wards are situated at Sandwell Hospital, but we also have services at City Hospital, including the Children’s Emergency Care Unit (CECU) and outpatient clinics in the Birmingham Treatment Centre. We provide tailored services for a wide range of specialties lead by a team of specialists. For more information please see the services tab.

We have an excellent clinical team including highly qualified specialist consultants and nurses.

To keep up to date with all relevant advice and treatments for a wide range of conditions please see our patient information page which provides links to multiple information leaflets.

For more information about disabled access for this service, please click here.

Team

The Trust has 17 consultants covering paediatric and neonatal care (care for sick babies).
All the nurses on the wards are qualified and/or have experience in looking after children.

City Hospital and Sandwell General Hospital are both teaching hospitals and you may be asked if you mind student doctors and student nurses participating in your child’s care. You are perfectly free to refuse, but we do need your help in order to train future doctors and nurses and would appreciate your co-operation.

If you are interested in working with the team go to https://www.swbh.nhs.uk/work-for-us/ where you can find our latest job vacancies.

Team:

Group Director for Women’s and Child Health
Dr Nick Makwana

Group Director of Operations
Shinade Coughlan

Head of Service
Jade Osbourne

Clinical Director
Dr Maria Atkinson

Acute Paediatric Matron
Brenda Taylor

Clinical Lead Communities
Petrina Marsh

Consultants:

Dr Rajesh Pandey, Clinical Director for Paediatrics
Specialties: Clinical lead for Neurodisability
Epilepsy

Dr Juliana Chizo Agwu
Specialty: Clinical Lead in Paediatric Diabetes and Endocrinology
Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham

Dr Meenakshi Bandhakavi
Specialty: Diabetes and Endocrinology

Dr Dilip Kumar Gandhi
Specialties: Designated Doctor for Safeguarding
Epilepsy, Community Child Health

Dr Chetana Kallappa
Specialty: Clinical Lead for Epilepsy

Dr Nick Makwana,
Specialty: Clinical Lead for Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham

Dr Maria Atkinson
Specialty: Respiratory Medicine and Allergy

Dr Ribena Akhter
Specialty: Respiratory Medicine

Dr V Ganesan
Specialty: Nephrology
Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham

Dr Gaurav Popli
Specialty: Haematology and Gastroenterology
Named Doctor for Safeguarding

Dr Fatima Zahir
Specialty: Emergency Medicine

Dr Yvonne Beuvink
Specialty: Infectious Diseases

Dr Sofia Omar

Dr Charlotte Avann

Neonatology

Dr S Sivakumar, Clinical Director for Neonatology
Specialty: Cardiology

Dr Penny Broggio

Dr Vikranth Venugopalan

Dr Ahmed Ahmed

Services

We treat children aged from 0-16 years. We also care for some young people aged over 16 years who have needs better facilitated in a paediatric environment.

We have inpatient and outpatient facilities within Sandwell and City Hospitals. However, we also have community teams to support our children and families to help prevent admission to hospital and achieve safe early discharges.

Children’s Emergency Care Unit (CECU)

Nurses and doctors at the opening of the Children's Emergency Care Unit at City Hospital early 2020.

The staff at the opening of CECU, in early 2020.

CECU is located at City Hospital and provides assessment and short stay inpatient care for children up to 16 years of age. The unit comprises of an emergency area for paediatric urgent care, and a six-bed short stay unit for children requiring a short period of observation of up to 18 hours. Children are assessed and treated before either being discharged, or admitted to an inpatient ward.

Children requiring more than an 18 hour stay are transferred to the inpatient children’s unit at Sandwell Hospital. The unit is staffed 24 hours, seven days per week by nurses and medical staff that are trained in all aspects of paediatric care, including children requiring high dependency care and resuscitation.

Children are treated in the unit for a wide range of conditions and attend as walk in patients, GP/community referrals or emergency ambulance admissions. Co-location of the paediatric services allows for an improved patient journey for the child.

Lyndon 1:

Lyndon one is a 25-bed inpatient ward with two allocated High Dependency Unit beds. We specifically cater for children aged from 0-11 years, although we will treat youngsters aged up to 16 years if they require high dependency care. We look after children with a variety of illnesses, who require inpatient care.

Admissions to our ward may be referred from CECU, the Emergency department at Sandwell or transferred from our paediatric assessment unit. Our teams aim to provide the best possible care for our young patients.

You can take a tour of Lyndon 1 below:

Lyndon Ground:

This is an 18-bed Paediatric Assessment Unit which also houses an inpatient adolescent area.

Priory Ground and Children’s outpatients (OPD):

We are a cross site team which covers outpatients, investigations and day surgery. We work closely with our long term patients and their families for continuing care needs.

City Hospital
At City Hospital we offer a range of specialist clinics for children.

These include:

General clinic
Allergies – click here to find out more about this service.
Cardiology (heart problems)
Cystic fibrosis
Dermatology
Developmental
Diabetes
Endocrine (glandular problems)
Epilepsy (convulsions and fits)
haematology (blood disorders)
Neonatal follow-up (baby clinic)

Sandwell Hospital
In addition to general clinics for children, Sandwell Hospital also runs the following specialist clinics for children:

Allergies – click here to find out more about this service.
Child development (held at Crystal House in Oldbury)
Cardiology
Constipation
Diabetes
Endocrine
Epilepsy
Genetics
Infectious diseases
Neonatal development (Low birth weight)
Looked after children
General orthopaedic surgery (bones and joints)
General plastic surgery
General surgery
Renal (kidneys)
Respiratory and asthma
Rheumatology (joints, muscles and tendons)
General urology (reproductive organs and waste urine issues)

There is also a sophisticated radiology department at both Sandwell and City Hospitals that offer X-Ray, CT and MRI scanning.

Specialist support for children’s services comes from pharmacy, laboratory services and many other medical areas. Outpatient sessions are available through consultant community paediatricians (specialist children’s doctors) with additional community-based services. This service is supported by physiotherapists, speech and language therapists together with nursery nurses and occupational therapists.

We also offer the following (please click on each service to read more about them).