Exciting changes are coming!
The Dignity Health website is moving to CommonSpirit.org to deliver a more patient-centered digital experience across CA, AZ, and NV.
When babies are born prematurely or have medical challenges, it can be a distressing time. We fully acknowledge and understand the situation. You can take comfort in knowing that St. Joseph’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is equipped and ready to provide uncompromised quality of care. We strive to do our best to get your baby healthy and home.
St. Joseph’s Medical Center has a 30-Bed Level III NICU. This means we can care for the tiniest and sickest of infants. For newborns who need intensive medical attention, St. Joseph's offers a caring environment combined with advanced technology and highly skilled neonatologists (doctors specializing in premature and high-risk babies), nurses, and respiratory therapists to provide specialized care. We care for over 500 babies a year in our NICU.
Our team of health care professionals includes:
As a Level III NICU, we are equipped to provide specialized care including invasive monitoring, conventional mechanical ventilation, high frequency oscillatory ventilation and inhaled nitric oxide.
Our neonatal intensive care team includes you. As part of our philosophy of family centered care, we encourage you to touch, hold, bathe, change and feed your baby as often as is appropriate for their condition. This will help make your baby’s transition to health and home easier.
However, due to your baby’s fragile condition, you may not always be able to hold them. There are other things you can do such as providing a clean cloth with your scent, a gentle non-moving hand, or assisting with a diaper change or weight check.
Because the well-being of your baby is our primary concern, every time you or a visitor enters the NICU, you must sanitize your hands. Sanitizing is also necessary after touching your cell phone, camera and changing a diaper. Infection prevention and control are very important in the NICU, and we ask that you use the sanitizing gel before touching your baby each time. At each entry point of the NICU, we provide cell phone wipes and sleeves to ensure germs are not spread from your devices to your hands and to your infant during your visit.
Your baby may be connected to a variety of equipment:
We also offer a developmental care program known as the high-risk follow up clinic, which allows us to track certain patients after they have been discharged from the NICU. In addition, we have the St. Joseph’s Donor Milk Program where we work with Prolacta Bioscience. Prolacta produces specialty nutritional formulas made exclusively from human milk for critically ill premature infants.
We encourage you to ask questions about anything you don’t understand. Our doctors and nurses are always willing and able to answer.
To find out more about our NICU call (209) 943-2000. You can also use our online Find a Doctor feature, or call (800) 677-4491 to get connected to a doctor that's right for you.
