AIM We compared neonatal deaths and end-of-life decisions in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) in a Dutch tertiary children's hospital. SUBJECTS All 235 full-term infants who died within 28 days of life between 2003 and 2013 in the NICU (n = 199) and PICU (n = 36) were retrospectively studied. RESULTS The median length of stay was three days in ...

BACKGROUND Problems with organizational culture, lack of or poor team communications, and conflict are often seen as barriers to improvement efforts. METHODS A survey measuring aspects of organizational culture was administered twice to staff in neonatal intensive care units participating in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Quality Improvement Collaborative Year 2000 collaborative. The survey...

The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a setting with high nurse-to-patient ratios. Little is known about the factors that determine nurse workload and assignment. The goals of this study were to (1) develop a measure of NICU infant acuity; (2) describe the acuity distribution of NICU infants; (3) describe the nurse/infant ratio at each acuity level, and examine the factors other than acuit...

OBJECTIVE Five NICUs that participate in the Vermont Oxford Network's Neonatal Intensive Care Quality Improvement Collaborative 2002 attempted to identify potentially better practices that would have a directly impact on nurse recruitment and retention. The group identified nurse recruitment and retention as an important initiative for many hospitals that face a nursing shortage. METHODS The ...

This article provides an overview of neonatal intensive care unit treatment costs for hospitals that participated in the Neonatal Intensive Care Quality Improvement Collaborative Year 2000 (NIC/Q 2000) quality improvement collaborative and discusses how economic information can be used in quality improvement efforts. Detailed information on neonatal intensive care unit treatment costs is presen...

An environmental investigation and a cohort study were carried out to analyse an outbreak of infection caused by a serotype O10 Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a neonatal intensive care unit. Thirty one cases of infection were recorded, including four lethal ones. The outbreak was stopped by eradicating the environmental sources: a contaminated milk bank pasteuriser and bottle warmer.

Five studies that evaluated five different quality-improvement initiatives for the prevention of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in adult, pediatric and/or neonatal intensive care units (ICUs) and that were published within the past two years in an infection-control and epidemiology journal were reviewed, assessed and compared. Each is a prospective cohort study that si...

This is a qualitative study aimed at analyzing the performance of healthcare professionals, as well as their contribution to a holistic-oriented care towards newborn babies in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The study was carried out in the Sofia Feldman Hospital, in Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The study's subjects were ten healthcare professionals who cared for newbor...

Developing nations face tremendous challenges in providing care to mothers and children. Uganda has some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. The Luwero Triangle in central Uganda is one of the poorest areas of Uganda. In the late 1990s, the ISIS Foundation began developing a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in this area. The article describes NICU development and...