The Maternity Unit at Musgrove Park Hospital and its existing facilities were built just after the war in the 1940s and currently welcomes over 3,000 new babies in to the world per year. The current facilities are in need of redefining, modernising, expanding and upgrading since their original construction.

The refurbishment project will focus on improving flow, capacity and providing a better patient experience for mums during and after their pregnancy and enhancing the environment by:

1. Recovery Bays

Women who currently require enhanced care from emergency operations, sepsis, infections or from post-partum haemorrhage (PHH) are cared for on the Labour ward where they can stay for up to 24 hours before being transferred to Fern ward or being discharged. This has an impact on the number of free beds on the Labour ward resulting in the delay of mums being transferred from Willow ward to continue their induction or labour. In preparation for required works the service has invested in additional training for key members of staff to enable them to provide high dependency care to women.

3,155 babies were born in 2018:

o 36% of women had a normal birth

o 1,136 women were induced (36%)

o 1,428 women had a caesarean section (15% elective and 13% emergency)

o 358 women had a significant (PHH) and required a longer stay on the labour ward.

With complexities in pregnancy increasing the unit is seeing higher rates of complications requiring one to one care and longer stays in hospital.

The new two-bedded recovery bay will provide dedicated capacity to transfer women who have enhanced care needs such as PHH or infections which frees up beds on the Labour ward. The further single recovery bay will be used to recover ladies who have had caesarean sections direct from theatre.

In order to provide one to one enhanced care to these mothers, investment in required equipment is essential. This equipment includes a CTG machine (which is used to record and analyse patterns of the babies heart beats) and monitors to trace the womens vital signs.

2. Reception

The main reception is the central hub of the Maternity Unit. It welcomes pregnant women and their families and is the first point of contact. Having not been updated for some considerable time this area is in desperate need of attention.

The reception area will be modernised and reconfigured to make best use of the available space, into one central reception for all Maternity services, creating a more welcoming and relaxed atmosphere (including a play area for children) and an improved flow within the whole unit.

The use of different seating, using a variety of fabrics and colours and additional furniture will enrich the environment.

3. Antenatal Clinic

The Antenatal Clinic will receive attention with increased seating capacity and the addition of extra scanning and clinic facilities:

An extra scan room will help to reduce patient waiting times (and offers opportunity for service development to include expansion of the specialist fetal medicine service.

An extra clinical room will support expansion of services and reduce patient waiting times.

4. New Equipment

In addition to the equipment for the recovery bays, extra items to enhance and improve the environment across the Maternity Unit for woman and their partners would be:

Recliner chairs for Fern ward - our friends and family surveys told us that women want facilities to allow partners to stay overnight. Purchasing these chairs will enable this whilst improving patient experience.

Analogue clocks - essential to ensure clinical accuracy, safety and efficiency.

Medicare bedside cots - to replace the current cots used with next to me cots which push directly up to the bed, particularly helping mothers who have had long or difficult labour or birth to establish feeding and a close relationship. These cots also support the hospitals Gold Standard for baby friendly care, meaning future generations of babies, their mothers and families will continue to receive the very best baby friendly standards.

The total project cost is £100,000 which includes:

£24,000 for 3 monitors which observe womens vital signs

£10,000 for a GTG machine which records the fetal heart on women that are still pregnant but unwell.

£24,400 for 20 recliner chairs that will enable partners to stay overnight.

£1,500 for 3 hand held Doppler machines to detect the fetal heartbeat for prenatal care

£9,600 for 14 Medicare bedside cots