New one-stop weekend service for children at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital

A Children’s Doctor is now on duty in the Accident & Emergency Department at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) from 12noon until 10pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Doctor provides a Children’s Assessment Service, supporting A&E clinicians to assess and treat children who attend the department.

This replaces the previous weekend service where children were referred to a separate Children’s Assessment Unit (CAU) in a different part of the hospital.

Sarah Bloomfield, Director of Nursing and Quality at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust which runs RSH, said: “We’ve learnt so much from the first year of the Children’s Assessment Service at RSH.

“The needs are very different at the weekend from weekdays so it makes sense to provide the full service from within the A&E department and Urgent Care Centre.

“This is more convenient for children and their families, so that they don’t need to be referred to a different part of the hospital.”

As well as being supported by the A&E team, the Children’s Doctor in A&E is also supported by an on-call consultant as well as the 24-hour CAU and inpatient unit at the Shropshire Women and Children’s Centre at the Princess Royal Hospital (PRH) in Telford. The quality of the service will remain the same but it will be delivered in a more cost effective way.

Dr Jessica Sokolov, Clinical Director for Women’s and Children’s Services at Shropshire Clinical Commissioning (CCG) Group, said: “The service for children and their families hasn’t changed, but now the weekend service is provided in a more convenient location. We will continue to monitor and seek assurance on the quality of service and patient/family experience.”

On weekdays the service is provided in a separate CAU at RSH which is open Mondays‐Fridays from 9am until 10pm (last admission at 8pm). CAUs are not walk-in services. They are accessed only through referrals, either from GPs or from other hospital departments including A&E. On weekdays a number of booked and planned procedures also take place in the Children’s Assessment Unit, which is why a dedicated unit is needed on weekdays, but not at weekends when all children’s assessment services at RSH can be provided within A&E and the Urgent Care Centre.

The CAU at the Shropshire Women and Children’s Centre at PRH in Telford is open 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week alongside the county’s inpatient children’s ward.

Sarah said: “The introduction of a Children’s Doctor into A&E at RSH at weekends means an improved service, as they will be able to provide advice and support to A&E staff when children need to be seen in the department and in the adjacent Urgent Care Centre.

“Children who are referred will receive the same high level of care at weekends, and the only change is the location where the referrals are sent.”