Paediatrics covers newborns through teenagers: feeding and weight gain, fever, cough, diarrhoea and dehydration, infections, asthma, vaccination questions, growth and development, and the follow-up of a baby who spent time in the NICU. A neonatal intensive care unit and a paediatric ICU on the same campus are what make it possible to look after a seriously unwell small child here, in place, rather than moving them first.
The ordinary half — which is most of it
Most paediatric OPD is not dramatic: a toddler with three days of fever, a five-year-old with a night cough, an infant who will not feed well and has lost a little weight, a parent with a vaccination date they are unsure about. Children are not small adults in the way they present or in how much of a medicine they need, which is why the weight is measured at every visit and doses are worked from it. Antibiotics here are prescribed for the infection that needs one, with the course written down and the review date given if the fever has not broken.
Equipment on site
- NICU (neonatal intensive care)
- Paediatric ICU (PICU)
Timings Session days are not on this site yet — call the appointment desk before travelling.
Your visit, step by step
- Book as paediatrics and bring the vaccination card, the current medicines, and a note of the temperature and of the last wet nappy or toilet visit.
- One parent or attendant with the child — a second adult helps with a sick child and slows the room down for the next patient.
- Examination, weight, then only the tests that change the decision. Blood work is done in the hospital’s own lab; many results come back during the same visit.
- Treatment, feeding and dose instructions written out, the warning signs named, and a review time — either a follow-up date or the casualty door tonight.
What to bring to a paediatric visit
- The vaccination card. If a dose was missed, that is the document the doctor needs, not a recollection of which injection was given where.
- A note of the last twenty-four hours: how many feeds, how many wet nappies or toilet visits, the temperatures with the times they were taken, and whether the child is playing between fevers or not.
- A photograph of any rash that came and went before the appointment. Rashes that fade are the reason a child gets examined for a fever nobody can now see.
- Any medicine already given, with the strength read off the strip — a syrup half-dosed for three days changes both the examination and the plan.
Questions the desk gets asked
Waiting is decided by how the child is between fevers, not by the number on the thermometer. A five-year-old who plays normally at 102°F is a different patient from an infant who is quiet, feeding badly and drowsy at 100°F. That is why the visit asks what the child is doing, and why a review time is written down rather than an instruction to come back if it gets worse.
Because a child’s medicine dose, and a good deal of what counts as normal, is calculated from weight rather than from age. The weight is also the most honest growth record a family keeps — a child who is not gaining is telling you something before any symptom is.
Bring the card to the clinic and ask — what is available on the day, and which session it falls in, is answered by the desk rather than assumed from this page. A vaccination question and a vaccination appointment are not the same visit, and a sick child should not be mixed into a healthy immunisation queue.
Where this clinic sits in the hospital
The reason a seriously unwell small child can be looked after here rather than moved first is that the NICU and the paediatric ICU are on this campus, alongside casualty, which is open all night and is the way in for a breathless, floppy or dehydrated child who cannot wait for a session day. Newborn problems after a delivery are handled with obstetrics, a fracture or a deep cut with orthopaedics, and a squint or an eye injury with ophthalmology.
Fever in a baby under three months, breathing fast or grunting with the chest pulling in, blue or grey lips, a child who is floppy, drowsy or not responding normally, refusing all feeds, no wet nappy for eight hours, a fit, a rash with fever that does not blanch, or any drowning or poison: casualty at once. In small children the warning window is hours, and an OPD slot is measured in days.