Flamingo Ward

Flamingo Ward is on Level 4 of the Morgan Stanley Clinical Building (MSCB), part of the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre.

Flamingo Ward is home to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) and provides care for children under the age of 16 who need intensive care for conditions involving the heart, lungs or airways.

It is where children are nursed before and after heart surgery, including heart/lung transplants, and the unit houses the ECMO (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) programme for children with serious heart and lung damage. Newborn babies with suspected heart disease or defects also stay on Flamingo Ward.

Flamingo Ward has:

• three four-bedded bays including an ECMO bay
• two double cubicles
• five single cubicles

Three of the single cubicles are isolation rooms – for children who either have an infection or need to be protected from infection.

Flamingo Ward
Level 4, Morgan Stanley Clinical Building,
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Great Ormond Street
London
WC1N 3JH

Map 

Flamingo Ward telephone number: 020 7829 8828.

For urgent enquiries outside of office hours please call the switchboard on 020 7405 9200 and ask for the on-call CICU co-ordinator on extension 8828/8652.

Staff on the ward

Flamingo Ward is staffed 24 hours a day by a multidisciplinary team including intensive care doctors and nurses, cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, ventilator technicians, physiotherapists, dieticians, pharmacists, chaplains, volunteers and housekeepers.

The person who co-ordinates your child’s care while on Flamingo Ward is the intensive care consultant on duty that day.

The following members of staff will help you during your stay on the ward:

• Suzanne Cullen, Head of Nursing
• Anne Layther, Unit Manager
• Barbara Childs, Lead Nurse
  
  

Conditions we treat

The special areas of expertise include:

• intensive care pre and post heart surgery
• heart/lung transplants
• ECMO
• diagnosis and treatment for newborns with suspected heart problems
• Berlin Heart – bridge to transplant
• tracheal surgery
• pulmonary hypertension
  
  

Ward information

Having a child on CICU is a frightening and disorientating experience as everything is unfamiliar. Please remember that everybody on the unit is here to help you and your child, and you should feel free to ask any questions or query anything you don’t understand or are uncomfortable with.

When your child is first admitted to CICU, it will take around 45 minutes to attach monitors, drips and tubes to feed them and give medication. They will then be ready for you to visit.

For security reasons, the doors to CICU are kept locked. Please ring the bell and a member of staff will let you in as quickly as possible.

We would also request:

• Please have only two visitors at a time.
• If other visitors come to see your child then please be present as well.
• If your child’s brothers and sisters visit, please be there to supervise them.
• We would prefer visitors (other than parents) not to arrive after 7.30pm unless in exceptional circumstances.
  
  

Facilities for parents

When your child is in intensive care, there is space for a parent to rest by the bed and we are able to offer accommodation for both parents or for single parent families, one parent and a close relative (such as a grandparent) overnight.

This service is free and all bed linen is provided but we will ask you for a returnable deposit.

If you have other children who need to stay with you, please call the department for advice, as there is a Sick Children’s Trust house nearby.

The ward also has a parents' sitting room and facilities to make drinks and snacks.

You can use your mobile phone inside the hospital but only within designated ‘mobile friendly zones’. Using your mobile elsewhere could cause interference with our medical equipment.

There are also individual telephones beside each bed in the cubicles. Visitors are welcome to call you directly on your dedicated phone line. To make outgoing calls, you can buy telephone cards in the hospital shop.

For mothers who wish to breastfeed, we provide a dedicated room. We also provide the equipment to 'express' breast milk so your child can be fed through a nasogastric tube, if necessary.

Regulations on the ward

The following are not allowed on CICU:

• Flowers – water in the vase can develop a bacterium that can cause infection in children.
• Balloons of any kind due to potential allergy risk.
• Hot drinks or food of any kind are not allowed on CICU.

Everything you bring in for your child should be washable to reduce the risk of infection. This includes soft toys.

If any of your visitors have been in contact with coughs, colds, tummy bugs, or infectious diseases like chicken pox or measles, we would prefer them to wait until they are better before visiting. No child will be allowed in to the ward if they have chicken pox.

Last reviewed by Great Ormond Street Hospital: 24 April 2012