Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Our neonatology unit provides the most advanced and highly specialized care for critically ill babies regardless of birth weight, gestational age, or place of birth.
By working closely with each parent and creating a supportive and compassionate environment, our neonatal team provides some of the most advanced equipment and strategies of care available today for diagnosing and treating critically ill newborns.
Developmentally centered care
In order to provide holistic treatments to our youngest patients, we make sure to include physical therapists (PT) and occupational therapists (OT) in our infant care team. These medical professionals provide research-based positioning to promote motor development and help evaluate conditions and behaviors such as alertness, muscle tone and rooting behaviors.
High-risk follow-up clinic
Along with comprehensive in-hospital care, the NICU at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center features a specialized team to assist parents after they take their baby home. Through collaboration with a baby’s personal pediatrician, the High-risk Infant Follow-up Program specialists evaluate the infant's physical, neurological and emotional growth during the crucial first three years of development.
Kangaroo care
In order to help enhance a parent’s bond with their newborn, Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center offers kangaroo care, a method of skin-to-skin contact coordinated around a baby’s daily care routine. Kangaroo care is important for all newborns, but especially important whenever possible for premature infants, helping vital development. Further benefits include:
- Improved attachment between baby and parents
- Promotion of longer and deeper sleep cycles for the infant
- Promotion of breast milk production in the mother and successful breast feeding for mother and baby
- Improved infant digestion
- A calming and relaxing experience for parents and baby
Infants that require an enhanced level of care often have to be transferred between different pieces of equipment during treatment. Because transfer can cause stress and potential harm to a baby, our NICU features innovative and high-tech bassinets called Giraffes.
The Giraffe significantly reduces the need to transfer infants because it can be used as an open table warmer when the infant needs maximum accessibility, and can be converted into an incubator/isolette at the touch of a button. Along with providing safety and comfort to infants, the Giraffe:
- Provides a temperature-controlled environment
- Blocks outside light and sound
- Weighs the baby
- Rotates 360 degrees
- Provides a setting where surgery can be conducted, if necessary
In an effort to provide top quality care, Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical’s intensive infant care features:
- Level III NICU – highest level of neonatal care available in the San Fernando Valley
- 24/7 neonatologist attendance at any high-risk delivery
- Advanced ventilation techniques including high frequency ventilation, nitric oxide, non-invasive ventilation
- Therapeutic hypothermia
- Specialized NICU-based procedures such as PDA ligation and ROP laser surgery
- CCS certified for neonatal surgery
- Full spectrum of multidisciplinary care, including:
- Lactation consultation, availability of donor breast milk
- Nutritionists
- Pharmacists
- Physical and occupational therapists
- Full spectrum of pediatric sub-specialists, including:
- Pediatric cardiology
- Pediatric neurology
- Pediatric otolaryngology (ENT)
- Pediatric infectious disease
- Pediatric ophthalmology
Visitation
Parents may visit at all hours, but we encourage one parent to visit at a time. A parent may spend the night for the child's comfort. We provide a sleeper chair at the child's bedside and meal tickets for one parent to enjoy meals at our cafeteria. For your convenience, we also offer free parking to parents for the duration of your child's stay.
Returning our pediatric patients to good health is our goal at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center. Sometimes this means having to enforce special visitation restrictions, especially during times of seasonal illness. Please check with the patient's nurse before inviting friends or family members other than parents to visit.
Individualized family conferences
These meetings occur on an "as needed" basis. Each infant has a personal NICU team, consisting of you, the parents and caregivers; the primary physician or nurse practitioner; specialty physicians; occupational therapist orphysical therapist; social worker and discharge planner; and primary bedside nurse. Any or all of the team may meet to plan your infant's care, consult with one another, check progress and decide next steps.
Rooming in
The "Rooming In" program is designed to empower parents with confidence in their ability to care for their baby before taking them home. Under the supervision of the infant's primary bedside nurse, parents or other caregivers are encouraged to spend an entire day or an entire night providing "total" care to their infant a day or two before discharge.
Lactation consultant
We encourage mothers to breastfeed their infants. Unless there are medical or physical reasons not to, breastfeeding is physically and emotionally healthy for both the infant and the mother. To help mother and baby, a lactation consultant is available in the NICU at bedside twice a week by appointment. Additional lactation support is available as needed. The lactation consultant provides one-on-one breastfeeding assistance and education to nursing mothers, as well as breastfeeding management strategies and techniques.
- Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency - Designated Pediatric Medical Center
- Los Angeles Department of Public Health - Emergency Department Approved for Pediatrics EDAP
- California Children’s Services - Community Neonatology Intensive Care Unit Designation
When a newborn needs care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), it can be a stressful time for the entire family. But at Providence Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, we’ve made it a little easier: New parents can have the reassurance of watching their baby grow and develop from their computer or mobile device.
The AngelEye Health CameraSystem creates a “virtual window” into the NICU. Individual cameras mounted beside incubator/isolettes provide parents with real-time viewing securely over the internet. Providence Cedars-Sinai Medical Center offers the webcam as a free service, but we know the reassurance and peace of mind it offers is priceless.
The AngelEye webcam offers many benefits for parents and their newborns.
Bonding between parents and their newborn is as important in the NICU as it is at home. Having the ability to watch your baby anywhere can help keep you involved and informed – and strengthen the connection between you and your baby.
With the AngelEye Health CameraSystem, traditional boundaries of distance disappear. Family, across the street or across the globe, now has access to real-time video of the newest family member.
If you have technical difficulties, AngelEye Health’s customer support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by phone at 855-456-6805, via email or online.
All video and information are secured with 256-bit SSL encryption, the web security standard. No video is stored.
Only the baby’s parents will be allowed to activate the webcam. You will create a unique account to use the camera and are welcome to invite family and friends to create their own accounts. No one else will be able to access the webcam, except for authorized personnel at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center.