State of the art incubators unveiled

It is not many people that can say they have been involved in a four year birth but that’s how long it has taken for two new transport incubators to be delivered to the Neonates Intensive Care Unit.

For NICU Nurse Manager Rosemary Escott the wait has been worthwhile as the modifications made will make it quicker and easier for both staff and patients to get back to the hospital. “Most importantly the new units are capable of carrying twins, so previously where two incubators, two flight nurses and often two trips were needed, now one nurse can potentially do it,” Rosemary said.

Costing around $200,000 each these are Capital & Coast’s first machines that are CAA approved, said NICU Clinical Leader Vaughan Richardson.  “Having them certified for aviation use is due to the hard work of John Goldswain and our Biomedical technical expert Tengseng Ong. Special thanks must also go to Capital & Coast’s legal expert Hiranthi Abeygoonesekera, who had to wade through mountains of bureaucracy,” said Vaughan.

At a special unveiling on August 31st, long-serving NICU staff Vaughan Richardson and Transport Team Co-ordinator Sara McIntyre had the pleasant surprise to see that the two units had been named after them.

Other improvements include a more streamlined look that sees all the mechanics of the incubator at one end, which allows you to more easily focus of your young passenger, and you can now transport them in a helicopter and use nitric oxide, whereas before you could only use nitric in a fixed wing aircraft.

Incubator designer John Goldswain, who worked for Life Flight for around 20 years, said that when the legal environment changed a few years ago incubators were no longer seen as ‘carry on’ and had to comply with civil aviation law. “The tricky part was that we had to have them strong but light enough to lift. These new models just slide from one unit to another. The new units also have universal fittings as aircraft all have different mains power. It’s been a lot of hard work but I’m very pleased with the end result.”

The Neonates team with the two new incubators

Working behind the scene was Incubator designer John Goldswain, NICU Biomedical technical expert Tengseng Ong and C&CDHB senior legal counsel Hiranthi Abeygoonesekera

NICU clinical leader Vaughan Richardson and Transport team Co-ordinator Sara McIntyre were both surprised to see the incubators christened after them