A major transformation of Broward Health Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit now gives low-weight newborns an even better opportunity to survive and thrive.
Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale has turned its multi-incubator NICU layout into an all-private-room setting and equipped the rooms with high-tech machinery.
Rather than spending days or months in an open space setting with other premature or sick babies, each newborn now gets his own private or semi-private room, own medical team, and accommodations for the family.
Along with sick or premature babies born at the hospital, newborns are flying into the redesigned Salah Foundation Children Hospital NICU at Broward Health on medevacs from places like South America and the Caribbean to get the critical care that will give them a chance at life. Typically less than 2 pounds, these little ones arrive in Fort Lauderdale and immediately access the hospital’s specialized medical devices that keep their lungs breathing and their temperatures stabilized.
“We take the most critical of the critical,” said Dr. Johny Tryzmel, medical director of the Salah Foundation Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. “There are other hospitals with level one and two NICUs, but when babies have conditions beyond their scope to care for, they send them to us.”
The first phase of a $24.1 million renovation and expansion of the children’s hospital has 63 newborn beds that span the hospital’s third floor. Construction will start later this month on an additional floor with 70 more beds.
The redesign comes as nearly 10 percent of babies born in the U.S. are born prematurely and the rates of preterm birth are rising, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The consensus among neonatalogists is private-room NICUs provide better outcomes for preterm babies: shorter hospital stays, improved success with breastfeeding, increased family bonding and higher patient satisfaction. Typically, babies in the NICUs are born before 32 weeks and weigh less than 3.3 pounds, need equipment to help them breathe, are critically ill, or have medical complications.
Tryzmel said the private room setting not only protects fragile babies better from infections, it also provides better bonding between parents and child, some who spend as much as three months in the hospital.
“We try to involve the parents in the daily routine so when they go home with the baby, they will know what to do,” he said.
With more privacy, doctors talk to the families at the baby’s bedside and have more candid and spontaneous conversations about medical care, he said. While staffing remained the same, roles changed to fit the new set-up and give babies more individualized care. All rooms have equipment for staff to monitor the baby from a central station.
Each morning, a team that includes a neonatologist, nurse, pediatric pharmacist, social worker and nutritionist goes room-to-room evaluating each baby.
“The family is involved in the care with a whole team,” Tryzmel said.
Gabriella West, director of Broward Health International, said Broward Health’s NICU provides care for about 1,000 babies a year, including those arriving from outside the state.
In recent months, babies have arrived from the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Bermuda and Ecuador, where hospitals weren’t able to provide the needed level of medical care. Babies also arrive on medevacs from cruise ships, when U.S. travelers go into birth prematurely while on a cruise or at a Caribbean resort.
The private patient rooms come with sofa beds, recliners, TVs, bottle warmers, diaper scales and monitors. Showers are available to family members, as well as a community kitchen/lounge area.
Vacationing in Jamaica, Lauren Lawless of California went into labor at only 30 weeks and gave birth to Cohen, who weighed about 3 pounds. The next day, baby Cohen arrived at Broward Health’s NICU by air ambulance, where he has been for about a month.
As Lawless cradles Cohen to her chest, she says the privacy has helped her bond with her son and learn from the staff who visit her room about signs to look for to keep him healthy.
Husband Marc says he appreciates the private room setting. “We don’t want everyone to know what’s going on with our baby, and we don’t want to know everything going on with their babies.”
Tryzmel said with the new design and more parent involvement, he feels more comfortable discharging babies from the NICU knowing their parents can care well for them.
“For me, I’m most proud to send a healthy baby home,” he said.
cgoodman@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4661, Twitter and Instagram @cindykgoodman