GFA 2025: Meet the PIPER team, which transports sick kids between hospitals
Eight-week-old Norah was found to have a heart condition in the womb, meaning she was quickly brought into the world for treatment. Last week she was transported from Shepparton to the RCH by a special crew.
Victoria
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When this PIPER calls, chances are it’s saving the life of a baby or child in regional Victoria.
PIPER — or Pediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval — is a 24/7 statewide service for transferring infants, children, and high-risk pregnant women between hospitals.
It is based out of the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Mother Sharni, and her 8-week-old daughter Norah, have used PIPER three times, to be transported from their home in the state’s northeast, for treatment at the RCH.
Norah went into fetal supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), meaning her heart was beating too fast, while in the womb.
“It was at 280 beats when she was in utero,” Sharni says, “so I had an emergency caesarian.”
She had another SVT incident at 30 hours old, then averaged five similar incidents each day.
“Norah was a week old, when the medication started settling in. Since then, she’s good for a week, then she gains weight, and the medication doesn’t work.”
Since the initial treatments, Sharni has been diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White, a heart condition where an extra electrical pathway allows signals to travel through the heart too quickly, causing a rapid heartbeat.
A PIPER team, which in Norah’s case included two nurses and a driver, was dispatched to pick her up in country Victoria, about a two-hour drive from the RCH.
Norah was loaded into an incubator and driven to Melbourne.
“We are a moving intensive care unit,” Jo, a nurse practitioner on the PIPER team, said. “Whatever the baby needs, we can provide. If we need to pull over on the side of the road and provide extra airway support or cardiovascular support, we can do that.”
PIPER receives about 5,800 emergency referrals a year, with about one-third of those rural and regional Victoria.
Sharni said: “I’m grateful to PIPER team and the RCH,” Sharni said. “Norah is so lucky to have them looking after her.”
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Originally published as GFA 2025: Meet the PIPER team, which transports sick kids between hospitals
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