Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Newborn babies who need intensive medical attention often are admitted into a special area of the hospital called the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Covenant Children's NICU is a 43 bed level IV NICU – the highest level of designation in the State of Texas.
Level IV NICUs are required to able to provide care to patients with the highest acute care needs, with virtually no transfers out to other facilities. They must also be capable of providing surgical repair of complex congenital or acquired conditions.
Our facility offers a full range of pediatric medical and surgical subspecialities as well as pediatric anesthesiologists to care for our NICU patients.
Babies in the NICU are primarily cared for by our team of neonatologists and neonatal nurse practitioners. NICU nurses specialize in and have special training and certification in providing care for the smallest and most fragile babies. Therapists, dietitians, lactation consultants, pharmacists, social workers and chaplains are also part of the NICU team.
Many times babies and children in the region need a higher level care than can be provided in smaller hospitals. As a level IV NICU, we maintain a specialty transport team of trained nurses and respiratory therapist that travels by air or ambulance to regional hospitals to stabilize and safely transport these patients back to Covenant Children’s.
Covenant Children’s is proud to offer NICVIEW®, a state-of-the-art camera system that gives families the opportunity to watch their baby in real time. The system is designed to reduce parents’ anxiety between visits – particularly those that cannot stay constantly with their child in the NICU due to jobs, finances or other circumstances.
The cameras are accessed through a simple and secure web portal or a downloadable iOS or Android phone app. Upon admission to the NICU, baby's caregivers will be given the choice to participate and, if so, are given a secure user-name and password by Covenant Children’s staff. They can then chose who else they wish to share this login information with – grandparents, siblings or anyone else they choose.
The NICVIEW® camera system was funded by generous donors from the community, as well as Covenant’s own caregivers who contributed to the Covenant Cares employee campaign. If you would like to support continued access for families, consider donating to the Covenant Health Foundation and designating your donation to Covenant Children’s and the NICVIEW® camera system.