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What is NISTAR

About us

NISTAR (Northern Ireland Specialist Transport and Retrieval) is the combined Critical Care Transfer Service for Northern Ireland. It incorporates the neonatal, paediatric and adult retrieval services.

NISTAR provides advanced resuscitation, stabilisation and inter-hospital transfer of critically ill infants, children and adults. Patients are managed by specialised clinical teams experienced in transport and retrieval. The service operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Approximately 1200 patients are transferred by NISTAR annually.

NISTAR also provides advice, support, education and training to hospitals on the safe transfer of critically ill patients.

NISTAR is hosted by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust (BHSCT) in partnership with the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS). BHSCT provide the medical and nursing staff, NIAS the dedicated critical care ambulances and crew.

At present the service consists of four distinct transfer teams:

  1. Adult NISTAR – Consultant (ICU/Anaesthesia/Emergency Medicine) and Transport Nurse based in the Regional Intensive Care Unit (RICU), Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.
  2. Paediatric NISTAR – Consultant (ICU/Anaesthesia/Paediatrics) and Transport Nurse based in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children (RBHSC).
  3. Neonatal NISTAR – Consultant (Neonatology), Registrar (Paediatrics/Neonatology) and Transport Nurse based on 1st Floor, Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital (RJMH), Belfast.
  4. Nurse-led NISTAR – Transport Nurse based in PICU, RBHSC (for lower acuity paediatric and neonatal transfers).

 

Mission statement

“To provide the highest quality critical care to infants, children and adults in need of specialist medical retrieval.”

 

Aims

To get the

  • right patient,
  • transported in the right condition,
  • to the right care,
  • in the right time,
  • by the right people with the right skill set.

Organisational Chart for NISTAR
The middle of the picture has the NISTAR logo and there is a box at the top and bottom of the page with the Northern ireland Ambulance Service logo and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust pointing into the NISTAR logo, to imply that both services are what makes up NISTAR as a service, as the team is built up of staff from BHSCT and ambulance care attendants from NIAS.

NISTAR Team Chart

NISTAR's Team Chart to show the staff members that build up the team. It starts with a box at the top with the NISTAR management team (clinical director/lead nurse/service manager) and the second row of boxes show the staff in the adult team (adult clinical lead/nurse coordinator/adult education lead), the paediatric team (paediatric clinical lead/nurse coordinator/paediatric education lead). neonatal team (neonatal clinical lead, nurse coordinator) and the NISTAR office manager. The third row consists of the teams linking to each second row: Adults link to "NISTAR adult team", paeds links to "NISTAR Paediatric Team / Advanced Nurse Practitioners" and "NISTAR Nurse Led Team", Neonatal links to "NISTAR Neonatal Team" and NISTAR office manager links to "NISTAR Call Management Team". There is a NISTAR logo in the top right of the photo.

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