UCC SONM 25 Year Book

UCC / School of Nursing and Midwifery

BON SECOURS MATERNITY HOSPITAL

The Bon Secours Sisters ran a maternity hospital between 1958 - 2007. This was set up to provide private maternity care to the women in Cork due to the increasing number of women who wanted to access private care and a hospital birth. This probably led to the closing of several private Nursing Homes in the city. In the early years, the majority of the midwives who worked in the maternity unit were Bon Secours Sisters until the opening of a School of Midwifery which operated from 1970 – 1980.

VICTORIA HOSPITAL

The Victoria Hospital was founded as the County and City of Cork Hospital for Women and Children, it had six maternity beds and provided maternity care until 1997.

In 2000, the maternity services at Erinville and St. Finbarr’s Hospital were merged under a joint management team under the direction of the SHB. The further unification of the Cork maternity services (Erinville, St. Finbarr’s and Bon Secours) moved to the new purpose built maternity hospital at Cork University Maternity Hospital in 2007.

CORK UNIVERSITY MATERNITY HOSPITAL (CUMH)

Cork University Maternity Hospital

CUMH opened in 2007, the clinical education of midwives and the maternity element of the BSc programme for general nursing students is now all accommodated at CUMH. The first Director of Midwifery in CUMH was Ms. Geraldine Keohane and presently Ms. Olive Long holds this post. Many services and clinical developments have taken place over the years. Thanks is due to the midwives and nurses for their support of students at CUMH.

This tertiary level unit had an extremely high workload with over 9000 birth in the first year of opening. Since then birth numbers have settled to approximately 8000 births per year and the hospital is now part of the maternity services of the South/South West Hospital Group which includes four maternity units (Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH), South Tipperary General Hospital (STGH), University Hospital Kerry (UHK), and University Hospital Waterford (UHK)).

88