NNICUPS News & Current Events

Dough-nation Night for NNICUPS

THE Nepean Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Parents' Support (NNICUPS) group will be the big winners from a special event held at Krispy Kreme's Penrith store on Tuesday night. The local store - which was the first Krispy Kreme store opened in the country a few years ago - held a 'Dough-nation Night' in support of National Premmie Day, which has become an important awareness campaign.
Visit the Krispy Kreme.pdf for more information.

Giving Back

After going through the ordeal of having his son prematurely, local father of three, Brian Talmage, is showing his appreciation for the staff at Nepean Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), by giving a gift like no other - pink tractors.
Visit the Giving Back.pdf for more information.

NNICUPS meetings

NNICUPS meet on the first Wednesday of the month (except January) at 10am in the NIC Unit tutorial room. Anyone wishing to support the Nepean Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is welcome to attend! Your involvement, no matter small will ensure the continuation of NNICUPS and will be very much appreciated. Our aim is to help the future parents of Nepean Hospital 's NIC Unit and be a part of improving facilities for these very special babies.

Purchase of equipment

NNICUPS is very proud to support the purchase of much needed vital equipment for the Nepean NIC Unit. A bay one intensive care cot has been ordered from overseas at a total cost of $59,000. NNICUPS has donated $29,500 towards the cot. We are looking forward to its arrival.

Fund raising

In November, NNICUPS approved $4000 to be used to purchase a much needed “SATS monitor” and $900 for a “Bilicheck” to be used in the post natal ward special care nursery called “The Cubhouse”. The following information was supplied by Sr Anne-Marie Allen, NUM post natal ward.

The Cubhouse is a four cot level 2 special care nursery that was opened in February 2005. The rationale behind the establishment of this unit was:

• to decant low acuity Level 2 babies from NNICU to accommodate those babies who require Level 3 or higher acute care.
• to minimise the necessity for transfer of babies to other facilities because of “bed block” in NICU.
• to provide surveillance of babies whose needs are greater than that which can be reliably provided if the baby is included in the accepted nurse/patient caseload on the postnatal ward.

Having babies as close to their mums as possible is also very important and the cubhouse is less of a journey than NICU when mum's are recovering from labour and delivery.

As stated at the meeting, The Cubhouse was donated equipment from NICU and paediatric ward when it opened but this equipment was already aged and second hand.

We are extremely grateful to NNICUPS for the generous offer to purchase some new equipment for us so we can adequately take care of the babies and prevent them from having invasive blood tests and having to go to NICU for monitoring.

Like I said at the meeting the current equipment spends more time in Biomed getting fixed than it does on the babies.