Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU)
As a Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) - Level 1 neonatal care, Kettering General Hospital (KGH) provides care to babies who do not need intensive care. Often, this will be for babies born after 32 weeks’ gestation.
Care can include:
- Monitoring their breathing or heart rate
- Giving them more oxygen
- Treating low body temperature
- Treating low blood sugar
- Helping them feed, sometimes by using a tube
- Helping babies who become unwell soon after birth
Sometimes, a baby might be admitted to a Special Care Baby Unit for phototherapy to treat jaundice. But sometimes, this condition is treated on the postnatal ward.
KGH is part of the East Midlands Neonatal Operational Development Network (EMNODN) and babies outside our admission criteria (babies requiring level 2 and 3 neonatal care) are transferred to a Local Neonatal Unit (LNU) or a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Northampton General Hospital, Derby Hospitals and Leicester General Hospital all have an LNU (level 2) and Leicester Royal Infirmary, Nottingham City Hospital or Queen's Medical Centre Nottingham who are within our network provide NICU (level 3) care. Occasionally babies have to be transferred out of the EMNODN as it depends on where specialist cots can be found.
Babies will be returned to Kettering once they are stable enough to do so.