2017: Neonatal Hospital Care to Home – Tools for Improvement

Vivienne Fitzgibbon, Limerick for her research poster: Neonatal Hospital Care to Home – Tools for Improvement

Each year approximately 74,000 babies are born in Ireland. While the majority are born full term and healthy, some unfortunately are not and require admission to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It is recorded in the literature that this is as high as 10%. Infants born extremely prematurely or with complex congenital conditions are now surviving to discharge, more often than not they require significant monitoring and co-ordination of home care.

The aim of this project was to improve the discharge process of a preterm infant born at 32 weeks gestation or under/birth weight of 1500g or less, through the introduction of two new discharge tools –A Preterm Parent Discharge Planning Booklet and a Baby Chart Discharge Checklist. This new discharge process for preterm infants would ensure more efficient and effective information handover to parents, and in turn this would improve transition from hospital care to home care for both Parents and Neonatal Staff.

Questionnaires were sent to both Parents (55) and Neonatal Staff (45) to gain information on the existing quality of the discharge information prior to the introduction of the two new discharge tools.

A literature review was completed to identify all the current research surrounding neonatal discharging. Senior and Swailes Change Management Model (2010)was used to introduce the two new discharge tools. The CIPP Modelwas used for the evaluation process. The neonatal staff group were evaluated as to whether their discharge advice had improved post implementation of the new tools.

The change process led to the successful publication of 2 new discharge tools specifically for high risk preterm Infants.