Newborn Care Centre Services

Wonderful things come in small packages at the Royal Hospital for Women's Newborn Care Centre (NCC).

The premature nursery, which opened in 1926, moved to a new purpose built unit on the 1st floor of the Hospital in 1966 and became known as the Newborn Care Centre in 1978.  In 1983 the first Level 3 intensive care neonatal bed was opened in NCC.  After 96 years in Paddington, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, the RHW relocated to the Randwick Hospitals Campus in June 1997 which is 6 km south east of Sydney’s CBD.  Co-located on the Campus are the Prince of Wales Hospital (POWH) and Sydney Children’s Hospital (SCH).  Today, the Royal’s NCC is one of the largest neonatal intensive care units in New South Wales with 44 cots and a team of over 100 nursing and medical staff. 

We provide highly specialised care for sick newborn infants – both medical and surgical.  NCC performs the largest number of preterm infant surgeries in NSW and is known as the “preterm surgical centre”.

NCC’s multidisciplinary collaboration and liaison involves highly skilled fetal medicine specialists at RHW and paediatric subspecialists from SCH including surgeons, cardiologists, paediatric intensivists, geneticists and metabolic disease specialists, just to name a few.  On this campus, many modalities of treatment and care for newborn infants are provided such as nitric oxide therapy and high frequency ventilation.  

NCC is affiliated with the University of New South Wales.  Our unit supports the training of many doctors undergoing formal training in perinatal medicine through the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and overseas educational bodies from many countries.  We actively conduct and participate in local and international multicentre clinical trials.

Nursing staff in NCC are provided with support at professional, clinical and educational levels.   NCC offers a structured and comprehensive  program for new graduate registered nurses.  The centre provides a wide range of clinical experience for nurses undertaking post graduate midwifery and neonatal intensive care nursing programs from the University of Technology of Sydney and the Australian College of Nursing.

Currently, NCC is the first neonatal intensive care unit in NSW to have implemented the Essentials of Care initiatives.  This involves promoting the many facets of changed principles of care to infants and their families to ensure excellence in neonatal nursing care, including inter-professional communication and relationships in the work environment.  Other initiatives that were introduced and implemented in NCC are Developmental Supportive Care principles, Advanced Neonatal Resuscitation Training Program, Parent Education Program, Parent Support group and Co-Bedding of Multiples Initiative. 

For any content related matters on this section, please contact Dr Srinivas Bolisetty.