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Tag Archives: UMHL

Increased partner access at maternity hospital

UL Hospitals Group has announced increased access for nominated support partners of patients at University Maternity Hospital Limerick from this Tuesday. With effect from Tuesday morning, nominated support partners will be able to access all three inpatient wards at the hospital, from 8am to 9pm daily. The new measures, being enacted at UMHL are in line with the guidance of the Health Protection Surveillance Committee (HPSC), which was updated on October 21 for implementation on November 1. In the interests of the safety of staff, service users and their support partners, these and all access measures at the hospital continue to be reviewed and risk-assessed in the light of the COVID-19 transmission rate in communities locally, the number of staff in the hospital and the possibility of those healthcare workers becoming unwell, and the infrastructure of the hospital site. This is the latest, and most significant, of a series of measures that have been taken since April of this year, …

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UL Hospitals Group announces gradual relaxation of access restrictions at maternity hospital

UL Hospitals Group has today announced the gradual relaxation of a number of Covid-19 restrictions on access to University Maternity Hospital Limerick (UMHL), as local transmission of Covid-19 decreases and the vaccination programme rolls out across the Mid-West. The option of having a nominated partner present for anomaly scans has been reintroduced at the hospital this week, and from next Monday, April 26, fathers/parents of babies in the neonatal unit will be permitted to visit, 4.30pm to 6.30pm, subject to activity in the unit. Weekly risk assessment is ongoing at the hospital with a view to giving a nominated partner 45-minute visiting slots on the hospital’s postnatal wards, M1 and M2, from May 10, 2021 between the hours of 6pm and 8pm daily. Eileen Ronan, UL Hospitals Group’s Director of Midwifery, welcomed the hospital’s first steps in the careful, phased relaxation of the visiting restrictions that have been in force at UMHL for almost the entirety of the pandemic. “No-one …

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New Research Paper Highlights Inequity in Anomaly Scan Offering

A NEW research paper published by the Irish Medical Journal, which was co-written by a South East Clare obstetrician, has revealed pregnant women living outside of Dublin only have a 38% chance of being offered an anomaly scan in the public system. Parteen native Dr Karen McNamara is a specialist registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology and a clinical research fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College Cork. She was involved in compiling the recently-published research, Maternity Ultrasound in the Republic of Ireland 2016; A Review. Dr McNamara noted the number of women being offered an anomaly scan outside of Dublin stands at 38%, a number that has remained largely unchanged despite it being highlighted in previous pieces of research in 2007, 2012 and 2013. She said the review she conducted with Dr Deirdre Hayes Ryan, Dr Noirin Russell, Professor Louise Kenny and Dr Keelin O’Donoghue, showed an inequity in the service that pregnant women are receiving; most notably, that 100% of public patients are being offered the anomaly scan if they attend maternity services in Dublin but only 38% are offered it elsewhere in the country. …

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Mid-West hospital leads Caesarean research

NEW research spearheaded at University Maternity Hospital Limerick (UMHL) has shown a reliable way to predict which first-time mothers are likely to need a Caesarean section when in labour. The research paper, The Genesis Study, was the only one from outside North America among the first 30 selected, from some 1,600 submissions from all over the world, for oral presentation at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Foetal-Maternal Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. The Perinatal Ireland research team showed in the study, which involved some 2,500 first-time mothers, that five key patient characteristics out of 37 characteristics that were analysed can be combined in a mathematical model to predict which patients are more likely to need a Caesarean delivery in labour. These characteristics are older maternal age, shorter maternal height, higher maternal BMI, bigger foetal abdomen size and bigger foetal head size. The study was designed and proposed in 2009 by Dr Gerry Burke, clinical director for Maternal and Child Health …

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