Children's Emergency Center

If it becomes necessary to take your child to the Emergency Room, your should know that the Children's Emergency Center located at Baptist Medical Center Downtown is the only one in our area exclusively dedicated to the care of children.

Operated by Wolfson Children's Hospital in a separate facility from the adult Emergency Center, the 33-bed Children's Emergency Center provides an environment that is focused on the child and is staffed with physicians, nurses and other health care professionals who are trained to work only with children. The Children's Emergency Center sees more pediatric patients than any other emergency department in the Northeast Florida region. Of the more than 100,000 patients who visit the Emergency Centers at Baptist Downtown each year, 45,000 of those are children.

The Children's Emergency Center only serves patients who are under 18 years of age. When a child enters the Children's Emergency Center, a pediatric triage nurse evaluates him or her. This nurse is uniquely equipped to evaluate the well-being of a child. Serious medical conditions can sometimes manifest as only subtle symptoms in children and it requires a skilled professional to perform this critical initial evaluation.

In order to provide exceptional care for children, the staff is certified in the following areas:

• All physicians are board certified in pediatric emergency medicine and have completed a residency in pediatrics.
• All nurses are certified in Basic Life Support (BLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS).

The Children's Emergency Center is located at Baptist Medical Center Downtown, on Prudential Drive. Parking is available adjacent to the center in Garage B.

Campus Map

Admission to Wolfson Children's Hospital

When the patient's condition warrants hospitalization, the child can be admitted directly from the Children's Emergency Center into Wolfson Children's Hospital.

For critically ill patients, the Children's Emergency Center physicians and team stabilize the patient and turn care over to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of Wolfson Children's Hospital. In most cases, the PICU physician takes over the management of the patient while the child is still in the Children's Emergency Center and oversees the transition to the Wolfson Children's Hospital PICU.

Fast Track

The Fast Track area within the Children's Emergency Center is known as the Satellite Pediatric Emergency Department (SPED). This area specializes in the care of urgent (non-life threatening) conditions. This specialization matches the patient to pediatricians, staff and facilities geared to test, diagnose and treat these types of conditions. The eight-bed SPED is located adjacent to the Children's Emergency Center and is open daily from 1 pm to 1 am. When the SPED is closed, all children receive treatment in the Children's Emergency Center.

Urgent Care

An additional option for pediatric (and adult) patients requiring urgent, but not emergency, medical care is Baptist Urgent Care.

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