Paediatrics

CONTENT UNDER REVIEW

Who We Are

Tayside Children’s Hospital is the paediatric service for Tayside covering medical, surgical, community, neonates, sub-speciality paediatrics and CAMHS. We are comprised of a large team of paediatricians, paediatric specialist nurses, administrative staff, trainees, children’s nurses and allied health professionals
Paediatric services are divided into scheduled and unscheduled care. We provide care for children and young people up until their 16th birthday.
Tayside Children’s Hospital is based in Ninewells Hospital & Medical School with peripheral paediatric services in Perth and throughout Angus.
Peripheral clinics include general paediatric clinics in Perth, Arbroath, Montrose and Forfar.

Children and young people from birth to 16 years of age with a medical paediatric problem. Please see individual Refguides for condition specific pathways.
Following referral, children and young people will be offered an appointment either in person or via Near Me. For those requiring in person review, an appointment will be offered to the closest locality where possible or directed to the relevant subspecialty service where appropriate.
Approximately 1/3 of referrals are requests for advice only
Paediatric guidelines and protocols are available through the TCH Staffnet website which also contains easy to access guidance for some common conditions. Within this is information around referral pathways for a number of conditions. The aim is that these pathways will be adapted with primary care, for primary care and be made available via Refguide.
Referrals can be made to the paediatric procedure team (PPT) hubs for blood sampling. Most children will tolerate having bloods checked in practice but this is not always possible and is often a 2 person job. If your referral is for bloods only, please make this clear in your referral letter via SCI Gateway. These patients will be appointed directly to a PPT hub without clinical review. Bloods must be requested on ICE by the referring clinician.

Referrals can be made directly to: paediatric surgery, paediatric orthopaedics, community paediatrics, paediatric enuresis, the Tayside Healthy Weight service, paediatric audiometry, paediatric physiotherapy, paediatric occupational therapy, paediatric dietetics, paediatric dentistry.
Referrals for dermatology, podiatry, ENT, ophthalmology etc can be made directly to those specialties who then appoint into the appropriate clinics.

Please also do not refer:

Children whose health concerns may be managed closer to home by health visitor, school nurse etc
Children with behavioural difficulties such as fussy eating, soiling, sleep problems. Consider referral to health visitor or school nurse. These families can be signposted to a number of online resources:

Acute paediatrics – emergency referrals accepted from primary care and ED by contacting the paediatric registrar on call via switchboard on bleep 4184. Available 24 hours a day. Emergency advice also available.
Routine or urgent referrals should be made via the SCI-Gateway referral system. Requests can be made for either advice or for review.
If parents have requested a second opinion this should be sought within the practice and referral to paediatrics only for a specialist opinion. A number of parents request paediatric referral despite the correct management in primary care. In this situation we may reply to the referrer supporting their ongoing management. Referrers should feel able to share this reply with families.
Please include information on response to primary care management.
Please include test results, photos etc when appropriate. Growth data is considered essential for most paediatric referrals therefore please provide an up to date length/height, weight and OFC (<2’s).
Data sharing is also important if investigations have not been completed in an NHS Tayside laboratory (NHS Fife lab results are not visible to NHST secondary care teams)

Non-emergency advice is available via SCI-Gateway.