Colquitt Regional Medical Center is proud to announce the opening of its new six-bed inpatient pediatric unit, designed to provide the highest quality care to young patients in the community.
The pediatric unit is staffed by a team of highly-trained physicians and nurses who are dedicated to providing compassionate and comprehensive care to children of all ages.
Each of the six patient rooms has been designed with a unique theme to create a comfortable and engaging environment for children. The themes include a space adventure, a coral reef, a jungle, a backyard farm, a land of dinosaurs, and a hot air balloon flight. These themes help to create a fun and interactive space for children to explore while they receive the care they need.
“Our team understands that hospitalization can be a stressful and difficult time for children and their families,” said Colquitt Regional President and CEO Jim Matney. “That’s why we’ve worked hard to design a space that is both welcoming and entertaining for families, while featuring the newest technology needed to care for our pediatric patients.”
In 2021, Colquitt Regional implemented a pediatric hospital medicine program in an effort to reduce the number of children needing to be transferred to surrounding facilities. In addition to the pediatric hospitalist physicians, the nurses and respiratory therapists in this unit received additional training in pediatrics and are now able to care for patients with upgraded, pediatric-specific monitoring technology.
“With this new unit, we are able to treat a large majority of diagnoses here in the child’s hometown, with their support system close-by,” said Colquitt Regional Pediatric Chairman Woodwin Weeks, DO. “There will still be some cases where a child needs a higher level of care than we are able to safely provide and those patients will be transferred to other facilities, but this addition will greatly decrease those circumstances.”
Some of the most common diagnoses that the Colquitt Regional pediatric care team provides treatment for include dehydration, asthma, influenza, appendicitis, urinary tract infections, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, and viral infections.
“It can be very challenging for parents who are trying to care for their family when a child is transferred three or four hours away,” said Hospital Authority Chairman Richard E. Turner, Jr. “The opening of this new pediatric unit is a testament to Colquitt Regional’s commitment to providing highly-skilled, patient-centered care to all members of this community and the surrounding areas.”
The pediatric unit will also play an integral role in training the residents at Georgia South Family Medicine Residency Program. Georgia South residents provide pediatric care in the clinic setting and also complete pediatric rotations in the hospital. This expansion will give them more opportunities to gain hands-on experience with pediatric patients.
For more information on the new inpatient pediatric unit at Colquitt Regional, please call the marketing department at 229-890-3552.
