The children’s acute nursing initiative (CANI) is a team of nurses who help with the early discharge of children from hospital.

We look after children from the Newcastle area who have been unwell in hospital but have improved enough to go home – with the support from CANI’s team of experienced children’s nurses.

Our services

To help children go home earlier, we can:

Our Allergy Service is led by a specialist team based in the Great North Children’s Hospital at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Clinics also take place in Benfield Park Medical Group in east Newcastle and specialist clinics at the Freeman Hospital.

Our Children’s audiology services provides a full range of hearing tests from birth upwards.

We work closely with other professionals and specialists to provide support for children with hearing impairments.

These include:

• Educational sensory support workers
• Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) consultants
• Speech and Language Therapists; and Health Visitors.

If your child needs digital hearing aids, we can fit and programmed these specifically for your child.

Our children’s endocrinology and diabetes service is a regional centre for children with hormonal disorders, including diabetes.

Our team run an extensive range of clinics in diabetes, general endocrinology and growth.

Alongside this we run specialist clinics for children with Turner Syndrome and Metabolic Syndrome.

We also run a number of joint clinics with other clinical colleagues specialising in:

The Children’s Audiology service can help with children’s hearing aids, their fitting, hearing aid reviews and repairs.

The Children’s Heart Unit at the Freeman Hospital provides care for children up to 18 years old who need medical or surgical help for conditions involving the heart, lungs and airways.

It is one of two units in the UK to carry out heart and lung transplants on children.

We are the only centre in the country to provide all cardiac care from conception, through birth, childhood and on to adulthood.

Our infectious diseases service looks after children admitted to the hospital with severe infections.

Together with the microbiologists and virologists, we also advise other teams looking after children with infections such as osteomyelitis or meningitis.

We advise on:

• diagnostic tests
• which antibiotics to use – either by cannula or medicine, or tablets – and for how long.

With this advice we aim to get the best results with as few side-effects as possible.

Children’s intensive care provides medical and nursing care for critically ill children from birth to 16 years.

Children can become critically ill when one or more of their organs start to fail. This can cause them to become so ill there is a risk that they may die. 

Children’s intensive care aims to support children through their illness until they recover to continue life with their family.

Critical illness can be cause by a number of reasons

We provide a comprehensive regional children’s kidney disease (nephrology) service for the North East and North Cumbria.

One of only thirteen specially designated centres for children’s nephrology in the UK, we look after children from childbirth up to the age of 18 years.

Our service is mainly led by consultants and specialist nurses who are specially trained to be able to diagnose and treat acute kidney injury (sudden kidney failure), as well chronic kidney disease (long term kidney failure).

Our children’s neurology department is the only specialist neurology service in the North East and Cumbria.

We provide highly advanced treatments for disorders of the brain, spinal cord, nerves and muscles.

This includes treatment for:

Our children’s orthopaedic service cares for children and young people with disorder and injuries to muscles, tendons, joints, bones and nerves.

We aim to provide our children with the best possible orthopaedic care at the Great North Children’s Hospital.

We provide specialist respiratory care for children and young people.

Our children’s respiratory unit provides specialist respiratory care for children in the North East. Patients are referred to us from local paediatricians and GPs.

We support patients at the Great North Children’s Hospital and the Freeman Hospital.

Our staff are familiar with the specific needs of children, and we care for our young patients on dedicated wards and outpatient departments.

Our children’s rheumatology team care for children and young people with rheumatic diseases.

Our specialist services include the investigation, diagnosis and treatment of children’s rheumatic diseases. We also provide education and ongoing support.

We are the only children’s rheumatology team outside London to provide autologous stem-cell treatment for children with the most severe rheumatological problems.

The service also has one of the UK’s largest research programmes into children’s rheumatology diseases.

We provide many types of routine and emergency surgery for children of all ages in the Great North Children’s Hospital at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Our team see children from across the North of England, from Leeds to Edinburgh, and Whitehaven to Tynemouth.

Conditions we treat

We treat children who have a range of conditions including;

Our Children’s urology and stoma care service provides care, support and education for children with bladder and bowel dysfunction.

We have an experienced team of specialist nurses, paediatric doctors and surgeons.

Together, we cover the entire northern region – from the Scottish border to Teesside and across to Cumbria. We also care for patients who live outside of the region.

Children’s (paediatric) ophthalmology service cares for children with eye and visual problems from common disorders to more severe conditions which can cause lifelong poor vision.

We see children with eye and visual problems which range from milder, common disorders such as:

Our physiotherapy service treats patients of all ages with a wide range of physical problems and conditions caused by illness, injury, disability or ageing.

These include:

Midwifery

Your community midwife will support you during your pregnancy and after your baby is born. Visit the maternity page from Newcastle Hospitals to find out about your care during pregnancy, birth and beyond. 

Would you like to lose weight, maintain a healthy weight or support someone else to do so?

Here you will find a range of useful information and resources available in the North East and North Cumbria.

Background

In England nearly 65% of adults are classed as overweight or obese, this is similar in North Cumbria and in the North East it is even higher.

MindEd is a free educational resource providing education about children and young people, adults and older people's mental health for all adults.

Newcastle Continence Service provides a home delivery service and a specialist nurse service for people with continence issues. Contact the nursing line for diagnosis  and assessment and then the continence service for help and support and delivery arrangements.

Resources tailored to the needs of families and children

On this site, you will find all the information you and your child need to fully understand asthma, know how to recognise important symptoms and know how their treatment should be so you can get the best possible control of their asthma.

There is also advice for how to look after your child’s asthma in school and your rights if your child has asthma.

The Little Journey app has been designed by healthcare professionals, children and their parents for the sole purpose of improving how we provide medical information to families about hospital. It was created with the aim of reducing any anxiety you or your child may have, by familiarising you with what may happen and the team looking after you. Information is delivered to children and their parents based on the findings of research studies performed in the UK and abroad.

Moving On Asthma has been developed by the Respiratory Research Team at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust.

As a team, we are passionate about improving outcomes for children and young people with asthma and this resource is designed to both support clinicians in adolescent health and equip young people with self-management skills as they prepare for the move to adult care.