During pregnancy your baby’s brain is developing and growing very quickly. While you are pregnant you can help your baby’s brain to grow as you start to get to know your baby. Here are some suggestions:

• stroking your bump
• talking to your baby/singing/playing music that you like
• thinking about your baby and talking with your partner and other close family about your baby.

Try and take a little bit of time each day when you can sit and talk to your baby. When you do these things you release hormones that help healthy development and growth of your baby’s brain. 

If you have any questions about feeding your baby please talk to your midwife. If you have any particular concerns about feeding your baby your midwife can refer you to the infant feeding specialist midwife.

For more information:

• Building a Happy Baby www.unicef.org.uk
• Off to the best start - information about feeding your baby 

Community Midwives and Maternity Support Workers (known as MSW’s) will care for you during your pregnancy and in the early days when you are at home with your baby. The MSW’s work under the direction of the Community Midwives who coordinate your care and they work together to support you until your baby is approximately 10 days old, when your care is then transferred to a Health Visitor.

The Community Midwifery teams are based at a variety of places such as GP surgeries, Health Centres, Clinics or Children’s Centres. Where you see yours will depend on where you live. 

Maternity Notes

Once you have completed our online self-referral form, a member of the booking team will be in contact with you to set up access to your maternity notes. At NBT we use digital notes called Badger Notes, which can be accessed on the web or an app on your phone. Find out more about Badger Notes.

Contacting Your Midwifery Team

For general advice about your pregnancy, your baby or your appointments please contact your Midwifery Team. Monday to Friday calls will be dealt with within 48 hours. The telephone numbers can be found within the ‘hospital contacts’ tab of your Badger Notes or by visiting the Contact Maternity Services page on our website. Remember; you can also get general health advice from your GP service or NHS 111.

Many parents choose to support Maternity Services at Southmead through fundraising or donations to mark the birth of their child or as a thank you for the care they received.

Fundraising and donations to maternity through Southmead Hospital Charity contribute to projects like these which have already made a huge difference to mums and babies.

Improving facilities - improving labour and post-labour wards create better environments for mums and babies. Last year the charity funded a £120,000 new family room. New equipment like birthing pools and ongoing general refurbishments are now needed.

Balloon Mural - Since 2016, our balloon mural has taken pride of place in the Mendip Ward with hundred of families adding a balloon to celebrate the arrival of their children in return for a donation to maternity services. Our Charity is planning to refresh and improve its appearance to encourage more families to join the mural and more donations that will support parents, babies and the staff that care for them. If you're an existing supporter and would like to know more about the plans, please get in touch with Southmead Hospital Charity on southmeadhospitalcharity@nbt.nhs.uk. We hope to welcome new families to the mural in early 2024, with more information coming soon. 

Visit our charities website to find out more about how donations support maternity services and our hospitals.

You can donate online to support maternity services or call the Charity team on 0117 414 0170.

Three-quarters of the 800 beds in the Brunel building are single rooms. The most striking feature of the single rooms is how spacious they are; each single room is 16.6sqm in floor area with the en-suite toilet and shower being 5.3sqm.

Their size means that we’ve been able to incorporate features that make nursing more efficient and this means better care for our patients. Put simply, the ample space means we’ve been able to make it easier to work.

Each 32-bed ward has 24 single rooms and two four-bed bays. We know that single rooms provide considerable benefits for patients, including control of infection, reducing risk of clinical errors (there are fewer distractions) and allowing privacy.

Each room has a wall-mounted medication cabinet, overhead tracking for a hoist, over-bed table, bedside basin, bedside cabinet and a TV. The size of the rooms allow for an electric profiling bed and reclining chair, which can also be used by visitors. A ‘smart-wall panel’ to the side of the bed-head incorporates oxygen, medical air, suction and, in some rooms, monitors. Throughout the room there are multiple power points.

Doorways are angled so that four single rooms can be observed at once and each room has an observation window.

Between each pair of rooms there is a standing perch at which staff can write up notes or enter information electronically while maintaining good observation of patients.
The main nursing stations have a drug preparation area and each has a system of tubes enabling the immediate delivery of drugs to key points. An electric call panel flashes to show the room the patient is calling from.

The 4 bed bays are single sex, spacious and have their own bathroom.

Upon entering the building, one of the most striking elements of the Brunel building is its 280 metre long atrium connecting one end of the building to the other.

This large open space has large areas of glass walls, with different colours marking the different areas, and a fully glazed concourse roof bringing light into this space.
From here you check in using the self-check-in screens available and then take the lifts or stairs to the area required. There is a welcome desk with staff able to help with any questions about check-in.

At the front entrance of the Brunel building, the height of the atrium is the same as the nave of Westminster Abbey and at the other end, where the Emergency Department (ED) is located, as high as Bristol Cathedral’s nave.

Our brief to bidders was less conventional than for other new hospital developments as we wanted this hospital to stand out from the crowd not only for its excellent clinical services but also for its high quality building and site design. Good internal and external design was as important to us as getting the clinical functionality right.

Our strong belief, based on research, is that good design reaps its own rewards in terms of wellbeing and recuperation rates for patients and boosts moral and job satisfaction for staff.

We set out six themes in our strategic design vision which were:

• Innovation and patient care – providing cutting edge design geared for top performance
• Flexibility – design in at the outset the ability for the hospital to respond to changes in the way healthcare is provided
• Welcoming Landscape – apply urban design principles to the development of the whole site, rather than only focusing on the building
• Connecting the inside to the outside – bring views from outside in, get light into the building through glazing and layout and get long views out
• Excellent finishes – high quality, non-institutional building and internal finishes
• Sustainable development – low carbon footprint, sustainable construction practice, waste minimisation.

General Fertility, Reproductive Endocrinology and Surgery 

Southmead Hospital provides a fully funded NHS fertility service now known as Southmead General Fertility Clinic. 

Southmead General Fertility Clinic offers couples with fertility problems a full assessment of factors that may be affecting chances of conceiving. The clinic arranges further tests, provides advice and treatment, and when appropriate referral for assisted conception treatment.

The clinic provides the assessment and treatment for couples below (apart from assisted conception services) as detailed below.

Male and female assessment

• Full range of diagnostic tests.
• Hormone, androgen profiles.
• Ovarian reserve assessment (for example AMH).
• Genetic and chromosome testing.
• Fertility ultrasound scans.
• Tubal testing: hysterosalpingography (HSG), laparoscopy and dye test.
• Repeat semen analysis if required.

Treatments

• Fertility monitoring for clomifene.
• Ovulation induction with FSH and monitoring for anovulation.
• Repair of fallopian tubes.
• Fertility surgery for fibroids and endometriosis.
• Hysteroscopic surgery for Asherman’s or uterine abnormalities.
• Assisted conception treatment advice: expert advice on appropriate treatment options such as IVF/ ICSI/ IUI/ donor sperm.
• Pre-implantation genetic screening.
• Arrange referral for the appropriate assisted conception treatment.

The Southmead General Fertility Clinic complements the excellent range of Reproductive Medicine services provided by the Gynaecology Department at North Bristol NHS Trust including:

• Reproductive Endocrine Clinic (PCOS, amenorrhoea, premature ovarian failure, hirsutism)
• Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic (patients who have experienced 3 or more miscarriages)

Please look at your local ICS referral guidelines for Fertility.

© North Bristol NHS Trust. This edition published January 2025. Review due January 2028. NBT003774

The Breast Care Centre at NBT provides people at risk of developing breast cancer,  excellent patient centered care and the opportunity to participate in research.

The centre has had a successful research team in place for a number of years delivering complex interventional studies. Please speak to the person treating you to find out if there is a research study that may be able to help you.

Current Studies:

PROSPECTS

SMALL TRIAL (v1.0)

ATNEC

EndoNET

SWEET

SIMBAR

The department manages the mortuary facility located in the Brunel Building at Southmead Hospital and the Paediatric/Perinatal mortuary in St Michael’s Hospital.  Since April 2009, when the Bristol City Council/Coroner’s mortuary opened at Flax Bourton the adult service in Southmead Hospital is limited to storage and management of the deceased and the facilitation of viewings.  Requests for autopsies on adult and neonatal deaths may be made through the appropriate mortuary (Southmead 0117  4141700, St Michael's 0117 3425428).  Tissues from autopsies requiring histological examination are sent to the Cellular Pathology Department at NBT for processing.

Cellular pathology is the study of disease in organs, tissues and cells. Histopathology and cytopathology are key diagnostic tests in the initial detection and diagnosis of cancer and other diseases supported by modern molecular techniques. Consultant cellular pathologists are able to provide information on prognosis and help to appropriately direct therapies in post diagnostic treatment.

The cervical cytology screening program detects latent disease in well women and plays an important part in cancer prevention.

If you have any questions about the tests, please visit Lab Tests Online-UK, a patient-centred website written by practicing laboratory doctors and scientists to help members of the public understand the many clinical laboratory tests that are used in the diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of disease.