Along With Advanced Care, Placer County’s First NICU Puts Families First
National Trend Toward Building Family-Friendly NICUs Debuts at Sutter Roseville

ROSEVILLE – Alicia Gambone, a registered nurse in the Family Birth Center at Sutter Roseville Medical Center, knows what it’s like to have a newborn baby in a neonatal intensive care unit. In 2005, Gambone’s son, Giancarlo, was born at Sutter Roseville and was transported to Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento’s acclaimed NICU, where he stayed for seven days due to Respiratory Distress Syndrome. He’s now a happy, healthy 3-year-old.

With her unique background as an experienced birthing nurse as well as a mother who experienced a NICU, Gambone was asked to help design the NICU at Sutter Roseville Medical Center. What Gambone and the rest of the design team came up with is a NICU that has no match in the region.

The 16-bed, 13,000-square-foot Sutter Roseville NICU, which has its grand opening Tuesday, Sept. 2, features many family-friendly components and amenities, including:

• Four private rooms that are roomy enough to even allow the mother to stay overnight. These are the only private rooms in a NICU in the Sacramento region;
• Spacious bassinet stations in semi-private rooms so the specialized equipment, nursing staff, doctor and parents can all be involved in each baby’s care;
• A look and feel similar to home, with oak flooring and cabinetry, sinks instead of wash basins, and even miniature cribs for babies that don’t need to be in incubators;
• A room allowing mothers to use breast pumps in privacy;
• A sleep room similar to a nice motel room to transition parents and baby from hospital to home.

“During the design process, a priority for me was to see a NICU that would make the parents feel comfortable spending time with their infants without feeling like they are in the way,” Gambone said. “At a traditional NICU, the space is so limited that parents don’t feel welcome to stay with their newborns. There just isn't any space for them along with the nurses.

“At this new NICU, I think parents will feel very comfortable spending the time they desperately need with their babies. While, at the same time, it is very user-friendly for the nurses and incorporates all of the latest technology for the health and safety of the babies.”

When the design process started four years ago, the challenge was to create a NICU that combined the top-level, world-class care for premature and critically ill babies that has been a hallmark of Sutter’s NICU in Sacramento, while at the same time allowing mothers, fathers and other family members to bond more with the baby.

“There is a trend nationally to make neonatal intensive care units more family-friendly, and this is the first of its kind in the Sacramento region,” said Dr. Gustavo Sosa, medical director of the Sutter Roseville NICU who was involved from the beginning in the unit’s design. “NICUs have traditionally been centered solely on the advanced care offered by nurses and doctors, and in the past parents weren’t even allowed to hold their babies in the NICU. Research has shown many benefits for parents and their babies if there is holding, snuggling, skin-to-skin touching. This NICU allows for that enhanced bonding between mother and child, and makes it so parents feel comfortable in getting involved in their baby’s care.”

The NICU at Sutter Roseville, an extension of the pioneering, renowned NICU at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, was built from the ground up for $11.9 million and connects to the hospital’s renowned Family Birthing Center, which is the only one in the Sacramento region to receive a five-star rating from the national consumer group, HealthGrades. The Roseville NICU is a Level III unit, which means it can care for the sickest of newborns who are in need of state-of-the-art technology to survive.

“With South Placer County having grown so much with many young families, this is a much-needed service, and the new unit is going to offer the best care around for preemies, multiples and other babies with low birth weight or who are sick,” said Dr. Sosa.

Dr. Sosa and the team of board-certified neonatologists at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento will provide the high level of care needed at the Sutter Roseville NICU. It will be staffed 24/7 by 16 nurses who have special certification in caring for babies in the NICU and who received extra training by the staff at the Sacramento unit. They will provide care to one, two or three of the infant patients at a time. The unit has the capability to be expanded as the need increases.

Deanie Honsinger, R.N., the nurse director of the Sutter Roseville NICU, was instrumental in opening the NICU at NorthBay Hospital in Fairfield. She is ecstatic about how the Sutter Roseville NICU came out.

“For years I’ve dreamed about what I would do if I could have a NICU,” Honsinger said. “I would make it really family-friendly, so parents could bond with their babies. I would make it really special for the newborns, so they would get the most excellent care around. And I would have a team of nurses and doctors that would work cohesively in a beautiful environment. With this NICU, I’ve got my dream.”

Sutter Roseville Medical Center, is affiliated with Sutter Health, a not-for-profit, community-based health system located throughout Northern California. For more information on Sutter Roseville Medical Center, visit the Web site at www.sutterroseville.org. Sutter Roseville is located at One Medical Plaza Drive, Roseville. For more information, call (916) 781-1000.