Maternity unit 'safer' in new Bournemouth emergency building

The new building on the Royal Bournemouth Hospital site is due to open in 2024

New maternity facilities will be safer within a new hospital facility, health bosses have said.

Maternity services for Bournemouth and Poole are currently provided at St Mary's Hospital in Poole.

A new building under construction on the Royal Bournemouth Hospital site will house maternity along with emergency and critical care.

Campaigners had criticised the changes for increasing journey times to emergency and maternity facilities.

The Bournemouth building, due to open in 2024, will also include a children's unit, enhanced emergency department and critical care unit, with capacity for up to 30 beds.

Maternity services are currently provided within a 1960s building at St Mary's Hospital in Poole.

Head of midwifery Kerry Taylor said it "doesn't accommodate" modern needs.

She said: "It wasn't designed for women in modern-day situations.

"Nowadays, women use birthing balls, birthing pools, would like their partners to stay after they've had the baby

"The exciting opportunity we've got at Bournemouth is to build a state-of-the-art maternity service which enables the rooms to be more spacious, luxurious and post-natal women can have side rooms rather than being stuck in a bay with four-plus other ladies."

Head of midwifery Kerry Taylor said the new maternity unit would have 'state-of-the-art' facilities

Dr Isabel Smith, medical director at University Hospitals Dorset, said there were advantages to "co-locating" maternity services in the building.

She said: "Sometimes there are complications when women give birth, and it would be so much safer to have the facility to move patients, within the trust, to critical care much more easily."

Work on the new building began following changes announced in 2017 as part of the reorganisation of Dorset's hospital provision.

Campaigners at the time criticised the "longer, unsafe journey times to A&E and maternity services" if they were solely provided in Bournemouth.

Poole Hospital's A&E is also due to shut, with the site being expanded to house 15 operating theatres as it becomes Dorset's main centre for planned care.

A legal bid by the Defend Dorset NHS group to stop the changes proved unsuccessful.

A new BEACH (Births, Emergency and Critical Care, children's Health) is being built on the Royal Bournemouth Hospital site