Our intensive care units and retrieval service look after critically ill children as well as providing support to their families. We are the lead centre for critically ill children for the South Thames and South East of England regions and provide a wide range of services and clinical expertise.
Care is based across two Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs): Forest Intensive Care on level 2 and Sky Critical Care on level 6.
We care for patients following all types of heart surgery (except heart and lung transplants) and are a cardiorespiratory centre providing ECMO.
We are home to the South Thames Retrieval Service - this specialist ambulance service transports critically ill children from across the south-east of England to intensive care units in London. The leaflet Transferring your child to a paediatric intensive care unit (PDF 1.15Mb) provides more information.
Research
The PICU team is passionate about providing the best possible care to our patients. We firmly believe that involvement in research improves patient care at all stages of the research project and that all children deserve the opportunity to be part of research aimed at improving care. We regularly contribute to national and international research studies.
We may invite you to take part in a relevant research study. We will give you information to help you decide whether you would like to take part.
National Data (PICANet)
It is a national requirement that data on every intensive care admission is shared nationally (PICANet). This allows us to benchmark our unit against other PICU's nationally and improve our service. This information is stored confidentially. Additional data is also utilised for ECMO patients in a similar way and shared internationally (ELSO). This data provides a wealth of information to evaluate and improve care for all children. If you wish to know more about this data and how it is used, then please contact one of the intensive care consultants or research nurses.