University Hospital Wishaw’s neonatal team collected a highly prestigious award at the recent Reason national neonatal conference in June 2022.
The award recognised their Quality Improvement (QI) work ‘Reducing incidence of severe brain injury in infants less than 30 weeks’ by a third.
Consultant neonatologist Dr Mahmoud Montasser led on the project along with practice educator in the neonatal unit Michelle Brooks, occupational therapist Gill Currie and advanced neonatal nurse practitioner Jo Gallagher.
Mahmoud said: “This award is the result of extreme hard work and dedication from everyone and I’m so proud of the team who continue to deliver world class care to our most precious preterm babies.
“We looked at our data and found that the incidence of severe intraventricular haemorrhages IVH (brain bleeds) was fairly high. Brain bleeds can be devastating to preterm infants and can not only affect their long-term outcome but can also be fatal.
“It was fantastic work to tackle the issue and by implementing our QI project, we managed to greatly reduce the incidence of IVH.”
Michelle Brooks, practice educator in the neonatal unit said: “We presented our quality improvement work to the national neonatal conference and were delighted to win first prize. All the staff who contributed to this project should be so proud.
“There have been new researches that nursing babies born under 30 weeks’ gestation in a certain way in the first 72 hours after birth could potentially minimise the risk of them developing severe IVHs.
“We put together a multi-disciplinary short life working group who then became the implementation team. This consisted of doctors, nurses, midwives, the infant feeding team and occupational therapists.
“We worked together to overcome any potential issues with the main concern being our ability to facilitate skin to skin between parents and their babies. We came up with a variety of ways to continue to facilitate this positive touch which also benefits our babies’ brains throughout our project.
“Following a test of change, staff education and the development of a parental information leaflet, we implemented the project in July 2020. We quite quickly started to see positive outcomes including a 22-week gestation baby Sophia (pictured) who developed no significant IVH during her admission which really helped motivate and drive the staff at the bedside who were providing care to the fragile baby.
“In 2021 we managed to reduce significant IVHs by 30% in infants below 30 weeks and by 34% in infants less than 28 weeks who are at more risk of IVH due to their immature brains.
“We are striving for continuous improvement and 2022 figures thus far look even more positive.”
Kate Boyle, neonatal and transitional care senior midwife, said: “I’m so proud of the team’s hard work and the fact it has been recognised with such a prestigious award.
“Despite facing stiff competition from hospitals across the United Kingdom, the work done by the team really shone through as it demonstrated improvements to care that will be of great benefit to our fragile babies.”
