Meet the Neonatal Department Team
Senior Medical Team
Neonatal Consultants
The Hillingdon Neonatal Unit has a group of experienced neonatal consultants offering a range of expertise such as cardiac scans, neurodevelopment and family integrated care.
Dr Tristan Bate (service lead)
Dr Gulamabbas Khakoo
Dr Jide Menakaya
Dr Elizabeth Lek
Dr Devangi Thakkar
Dr Upama Banerjee
Dr Anna Burford
Dr Adeela Siddiqui
Paediatric Consultants
The unit has 24-hour, on-site consultant cover. You may meet some of our paediatric consultant colleagues that support the unit out of hours.
Senior Nursing Team
Lead Nurse for Neonatology — Nilakshi Joshi
Neonatal Governance Nurse — Amitha Sasidharan
Neonatal Practise Development Nurses — Choihoong Mui, Krishna Rajah
Nursing Team
On each shift there will always be an experienced neonatal specialist charge nurse, who will support all members of the team. We are proud to have a set of extremely dedicated nurses who will support you and your family whilst your baby is on the Neonatal Unit. Our Band 6 or Band 7 nurses also offer a range of expertise, such as neurodevelopmental care and family integrated care.
Allied Clinical Staff
We have a range of specialist teams which support our work on the Neonatal Unit.
Speech and language therapists
Women and children’s pharmacist
Occupational therapists and physiotherapists
Neonatal dietitians are skilled at assessing, diagnosing, managing and monitoring the nutrition and growth of babies on the unit. Dietitians advise families on the nutritional aspects of breast milk and specialist nutritional products, to support optimal intake and growth, especially in cases where this may be of concern.
They provide specialist nutritional advice and suggest appropriate feeding plans to ensure infants are receiving optimal nutritional intake and growing appropriately.
The neonatal dietitian works closely with other team members to help families and their babies meet their feeding goals. They aim to give individual advice before discharge home and can follow up babies in clinic, to give further support on discharge.
The speech and language therapist is part of the neonatal team and works to:
- identify babies who are at risk of feeding and communication difficulties
- assess and manage these difficulties
- promote developmental care.
We will work closely with you as parents to promote early communication skills through your interactions with your baby. We will help you to read your baby’s cues and communication so that you can feel confident about developing a close relationship with them. We also have a role in helping both breast and bottle-fed babies to establish safe and positive oral feeding.
Developmental care aims to reduce any negative and stressful experiences for parents and the babies, and the neonatal team, including the speech and language therapists, are trained in this approach. We will encourage you to be fully involved in the care of your baby and we will help you to do this.
Our Infant Feeding Support Team is here Monday to Friday during the day to help support families with getting feeding off to the best start possible while your baby is on the unit. They can support with expressing colostrum, breastfeeding, and other forms of feeding, introducing oral feeds and what to do when facing feeding challenges. You can ask our nurses to call them if you have any questions or want any additional support.
The Neonatal Psychology Service provides emotional support to families with a baby staying on the Neonatal Unit. The service aims to reduce the stress that families may experience and support emotional wellbeing during this time. Our neonatal psychologist Rebecca Windmill will, where possible, introduce herself to you in the unit, or she is contactable via the nursing and consulting team.
Our occupational therapists and physiotherapists aim to support the development of babies who may be at risk of having movement or developmental difficulties because of prematurity, problems before, during or after birth, problems affecting joints or muscles or any other problems that may affect how they move.
