The Royal Children’s Hospital

RCH has been providing care to Victorian children and their families for over 150 years. As Victoria’s major specialist paediatric hospital, RCH provides a full range of clinical services, tertairy care, and health promotion and prevention programs for children and young people. RCH’s campus partners, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics, along with RCH Foundation, are all onsite within the hospital.


Dr Leah Hickey

Dr Leah Hickey

Neonatologist

Dr Leah Hickey is an Irish Medical Graduate who moved to Melbourne in 2008 to complete training as a Neonatologist. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Practitioners and holds a Doctoral Degree in the area of preterm gut disease. She has been employed as a Newborn Intensive Care Specialist at RCH since 2013 and was appointed as the Director of Neonatal Medicine in 2021. Leah is experienced in leading multi-disciplinary teams, including consumers, to optimise clinical and psychosocial outcomes through evidence-based practice and quality improvement initiatives. She is passionate about improving health and wellbeing outcomes for babies, their families and staff and has co-designed and implemented COCOON, RCH’s family-centred approach to engaging families in the care of their babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Leah has been a research collaborator with VICS since 2009.

Victorian Infant Collaborative Study

Victorian Infant Collaborative Study