The pediatric patient care services at AUBMC offer state of the art facilities and expert care to pediatric patients from birth to adolescence, with a wide range of illness and conditions. Our team consists of a variety of disciplines, including specialized physicians and nurses, inhalation therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, among others. Our specialized nurses are compassionate and expert clinicians trained to provide comprehensive pediatric care that is child friendly and family centered. They are leaders in the region in providing quality care that is based on the latest evidence. Their skills and knowledge are maintained and continuously updated through the availability of expert resources such as advanced practice nurses and clinical educators, in-hospital educational offerings, and national and international conferences. Our well studied nurse-patient ratios ensure availability of the nurse to address the needs of the patients under her care.
Our pediatric areas are designed with the child and family in mind. The pediatric patient care services are equipped with a play area dedicated for the hospitalized children, where kids can just be kids. We are the only hospital in Lebanon that has set and implemented a preventive infant/child abduction plan to ensure the security of our young patients on hospital premises.
Pediatric patient care services
The Regular Nursery is a 20-bed well baby nursery located on the 7th floor close to the maternity and delivery area. Our neonatal nurses provide well baby care to healthy newborns and their families. We believe in parent baby bonding, so we foster and support breastfeeding, parents’ involvement in the care of their baby, and family education. We offer individualized baby bath and care classes to parents.
The Neonatal Intensive Care unit is a 13-bed unit located on the seventh floor close to the maternity and delivery areas. It is equipped with state of the art medical technology and equipment to provide monitoring and care for premature and critically ill newborns. Our highly qualified nurses provide comprehensive, family centered care to critically ill newborns and their families that is based on the latest evidence. Our nurses are experts in the first-line resuscitative care of high-risk newborns. High-risk deliveries are attended by a dedicated team from the unit consisting of a physician, nurse, and an inhalation therapist for every high risk newborn. This team is solely responsible for the immediate care and resuscitation of the high risk newborn in the delivery area. Our nurses are attentive to the delicate physical, developmental, and emotional needs of our premature and critically ill newborns.
We foster parent-baby bonding and fully support the involvement of parents in the care of their baby, so we facilitate parental visits to the unit day or night, and encourage parents to hold, feed, bathe, and care for their baby with the direct support of their baby nurse. We foster parental involvement in the decision regarding their baby’s care by holding patient/family conferences.We are dedicated to supporting the safe transition from the neonatal intensive care unit to the home. We hold weekly multidisciplinary discharge planning meetings for all upcoming discharges in the unit. We provide individualized education to the parents on the care of the baby with special needs before discharge and encourage families to maintain contact with us after discharge to provide support and advice.
The Medical Surgical Pediatric Ward is a 21-bed unit located on the 6th floor and dedicated to the care of the children with a variety of illnesses. Our committed pediatric nurses deliver expert care with the child and family in mind. We encourage coherence of the family unit by allowing sibling visitation and accommodating for one parent to stay with the child during the hospitalization. All our pediatric rooms have a TV with kids' stations.
The Epilepsy Monitoring Unit is a specialized unit for the monitoring and diagnosis of seizures. It is equipped with a Video Long-Term Monitoring System, which continuously monitors the child simultaneously or independently by videotape and electro-encephalo-gram (EEG) readings. The monitoring system, aids in the diagnosis of the type and location of brain seizures to determine whether surgical or medical management is needed. Our nurses undergo special training and collaborate closely with the responsible EMU physicians, technicians, and other attending specialists in the delivery of care.
The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit is a 4-bed unit equipped with the state of the art medical equipment and technology to provide critically ill children with monitoring and care. Our highly qualified nurses are trained on the latest evidence based care of critically ill children and provide pediatric approach with the family in mind. They are specialized in the first-line resuscitative care, as well as the critical monitoring and therapy delivered to the critically ill pediatric patient. We are keen on maintain the family unit, so we allow flexible visitation hours to parents, encourage parental involvement in the care of the children, and involve parents in the decisions regarding their child’s care. We hold multidisciplinary family conferences to discuss the child’s condition and decide collaboratively with the family on the plan of care.
The pediatric step down unit serves semi-critical pediatric patients who are not critically ill but need constant observation and/or continuous nursing care. This usually includes children who are moving from a very critical to a semi-critical condition-the safe leeway stage before being transferred to an open unit. The unit is staffed with pediatric critical care nurses that provide specialized care to those patients.
We believe in fostering the normal development of the hospitalized child and are strong advocates of the child’s right to play, so we have on our services a dedicated play area staffed with highly skilled nurses in child play and education. The playroom is equipped with age-specific toys, books, videos, games, Nintendo, and TV-DVD player, and offers a wide range of entertainment and educational activities. The playroom nurse prepares a diversity of daily programs for the children such as puppet shows, singing, and educational games, and coordinates programs with visiting volunteers from different local and international institutions. During the holidays, the playroom nurse and pediatric nurses prepare special events that highlight the holiday and the moral learned from it in an entreating activity for the children.
Patients who are unable to visit the playroom because of their medical condition are visited by the playroom nurse and offered entertainment activities.
The Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon inpatient unit is a 16-bed unit specialized in the care of pediatric patients with a wide array of hematological and oncologic conditions. Services include chemotherapy, procedures such as lumbar puncture, blood transfusions and stem cell transplant, as well as for the investigation, management and treatment of underlying complications. The center is affiliated with St-Jude Memphis. The center is a one-patient-per-room unit. Our nurses have received specialized training to provide expert oncology care to the children at the center. The center has its own play area.
