Charlottetown hospital’s latest neonatologist helps increase providers for tiniest sufferers

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital has welcomed a brand new neonatologist into its ranks, strengthening take care of the Island’s tiniest sufferers and permitting extra infants to remain on the Island for his or her care, quite than being despatched to off-Island hospitals. 

“It’s quite a privilege to be able to come and join the team here,” mentioned Dr. Gillian MacLean, who has been working within the Charlottetown hospital since August. 

She mentioned she selected P.E.I. because of the abundance of alternative within the province — together with the brand new medical college based mostly at UPEI.

“[It] was another big draw for me to come and continue my work in medical education,” she mentioned.

A neonatologist is a pediatrician who specializes within the care of in poor health, untimely or high-risk newborns. 

“Being able to care for a newborn and meeting their parents at what for some people is supposed to be the most exciting day of their life, can sometimes turn into the most scary when I show up in the room to help their baby,” she mentioned.

That is a big privilege, to have the ability to be there and supply care and assist information households on their journey till their child is properly sufficient to take dwelling.— Gillian MacLean

“I think that is a huge privilege, to be able to be there and provide care and help guide families on their journey until their baby is well enough to take home.”

MacLean mentioned many of the sufferers they see within the QEH’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are born preterm, however not all. 

“We do [also] take care of babies who are born full-term who are born sick,” she mentioned.

“A lot of the time we don’t know that a baby is going to be born sick, so we’re called to attend the birth and provide care as soon as they’re born.”

Freeing up arms, and enlargement of care

Dr. Beth Ellen Brown was the only neonatologist on the QEH for a few years, and mentioned having MacLean be a part of the workforce has already made a distinction. 

“One of the biggest things that we are doing is moving the meter on the gestational age that we care for in hospital. So that means going towards keeping babies who are born 11 weeks earlier, at 29 weeks gestation,” she mentioned.

“We’re hoping to move there fairly quickly within the next number of weeks.”

Before, sufferers born earlier than this time interval must be despatched to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax.

Brown mentioned there’s a new follow-up program that the 2 neonatologists will work on, the place they may every see a subset of NICU sufferers to permit for work-life steadiness whereas masking the necessity for twenty-four/7 care within the NICU.

She mentioned that in a typical yr, between 900 and 1,000 infants are born on the QEH. Out of these, between 300 to 400 find yourself in the NICU, which Brown mentioned was a number of infants for one particular person to oversee medically.

Before MacLean got here, Brown needed to be out there always to assist her pediatric and obstetrical colleagues. 

“Now that’s 50 per cent of the time, so that’s really wonderful,” she mentioned. “And that means that there’s, you know, more time to do other work, like advocacy work — other really important things that maybe aren’t happening day-to-day in the NICU, but still are really impactful for the health journey of babies.”