Nathalie, a senior sister for Paediatric and Neonatal Decision Support and Retrieval Service (PaNDR), shares her CUH story.
Nathalie, what’s your role in our hospitals?
I’m a senior sister involved in the paediatric side of PaNDR, which stands for Paediatric and Neonatal Decision Support and Retrieval Service, for the East of England.
It’s my role to provide specialist care on location and safely transfer the patient to the most appropriate paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) or high dependency unit (HDU) area. This includes helping the team to stabilise the patient, checking and setting up the kit required, ensuring that we have all the correct equipment. I travel in the ambulances, providing critical care to sick children, up to the age of 16 years from across the region, who are being transferred from one hospital to a more specialised unit.
This is a new service at CUH, can you tell us a bit more about it?
We have been running this service temporarily alongside London-based services, and we are currently phasing in delivery of the entire service for the east of England. At the moment we cover Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk; from April 2022 we will also cover Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex.
We are getting everything ready for the service to launch 24/7 and be fully up and running by April 2022. We have been developing and fine-tuning processes and checklists, as well as developing the team, which now includes registrars. The team is currently recruiting, so if you have a paediatric intensive care unit background, we’d like to hear from you!
What do you enjoy most about your role?
It’s so special to go out and stabilise poorly children, enabling them to transfer to the services they need. Plus it’s really interesting to see how other hospitals and teams work, which allows me to see the bigger picture. There’s a lot of variety in my role, as I get to work within different environments such as the emergency department, theatres, intensive care units and wards.
What I enjoy most is empowering other teams, giving them the confidence and skills to treat their patients.
Going forward I hope we can do more, such as offering an outreach service.
Tell us about your CUH journey
I joined the PICU team at CUH in November 2009. Prior to that I worked in the PICU at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. Before I left Sheffield Children’s, they were just introducing Embrace, which is their highly specialist, round-the-clock transport service for critically ill neonates and children in Yorkshire and the Humber, who require care in another hospital in the region or further afield. I was really interested but was moving to Cambridge for family reasons; so I was delighted when this opportunity arose for PaNDR.
What does a usual day look like?
At the start of each shift we have a handover from the previous team and we then check all our kit to make sure we’re ready to go when needed. Our crews are coordinated in an operations room based here at CUH. When the emergency phone rings, one of our PaNDR coordinators takes initial details and then transfers the call to the appropriate team who then determines the best course of action. I’m delighted that several of the nurses on PICU have upskilled and rotate on the PaNDR service. Whilst our paediatric (PICU) and neonatal (NICU) teams work within their specialities, we all work supportively and collaboratively together.
Can you tell us about a case that really stands out to you?
One of the most memorable cases was a very sick baby who we had to transfer to London for ECMO. ECMO stands for extra corporeal membrane oxygenation and an ECMO machine is similar to the heart-lung bypass machine used for open heart surgery. ECMO takes over the function of the child’s lungs and allows them time to rest and heal.
Transporting such a poorly baby required a huge amount of skilled teamwork from everyone on the case, including the doctors and NICU staff. Due to the great teamwork between all the teams we managed to safely transport the baby to the cardiac unit for the care needed.
Do you have any advice for anyone considering a role with PaNDR?
This is a really exciting time to join PaNDR as it’s still a relatively new service. If you are an experienced PICU or NICU nurse who is looking for a challenge, and you want to expand your role and abilities, please apply – it’s really worth the leap.
With plans for the new Children’s Hospital in development here in Cambridge, this is a perfect time to join PaNDR
Our experienced drivers of our ambulances to enable us to work around the clock to provide the service. Our drivers aren’t just drivers, they’re definitely a part of the team.
Read more about the fantastic job opportunities with PaNDR.
PaNDR is part of CUH’s vision for children’s services in our region, to provide high quality bespoke care in the right place at the right time. This vision also includes the Cambridge Children’s Hospital (CCH). Read more on the PaNDR website (opens in a new tab) and the CCH website (opens in a new tab).