NMH

NMH | 2024 44 Neonatology enormously grateful to our families for their willingness to participate in research at such a difficult time in their lives. We are also hugely grateful to our colleagues – nursing, administrative, clinical engineering, allied health and medical – for their support, as we try to answer important questions about how to better care for babies. One achievement the Department would like to highlight this year is the continued promotion of breastfeeding for our most vulnerable babies. We actively encourage women to express breast milk for their premature babies and use those tiny precious drops of colostrum as babies' first feeds. With the support and encouragement, not just of the staff in the NICU but also of the staff on the postnatal wards, the numbers of babies receiving their own mother's milk is increasing and we are seeing for the first time, mothers who have successfully transitioned their baby from tube feeding to exclusive breastfeeding, before discharge home. Our staff should take great pride in the role they play in empowering women to successfully breastfed their babies even when delivered prematurely. In addition, 2023 saw the appointment of an additional lactation nurse dedicated to NICU, Ms Ramita Dangol. Ramita has hugely enhanced the lactation support service offered to NICU mothers and over 2024, she has introduced a number of quality improvement initiatives which have resulted in both cost and environmental savings. While most babies make the transition to extra-uterine life without a problem, we know that about 5 in every 100 babies born at term require medical assistance to help them begin breathing. As time is of the essence, much effort is focused on training staff, and not just those working in the Department of Neonatology, in the art of neonatal resuscitation. Increasingly, it is being recognised that simulation is a powerful tool to teach practical skills, build proficiency and speed and encourage good teamwork. Dr Eoin O'Currain, Dr Carmel Moore and Ms Shirley Moore ANP now run weekly neonatal resuscitation simulations in various locations around the hospital. These sessions have been very well received by staff and have resulted in improved core competencies across all levels and grade of staff. Sadly, not all babies born in NMH survive and ensuring that the journey travelled by these families is as free from distress as possible is extremely important. In 2024, we further expanded our neonatal palliative care service in conjunction with the paediatric palliative care team in Children's Health Ireland. Dr John Allen, consultant in paediatric palliative care medicine attends NMH weekly and offers valuable insights and advice to the weekly perinatal meeting and the neonatal-fetal medicine MDT. Dr Allen provides excellent support to both the neonatal and fetal medicine teams and enhances the links with community palliative care services. We continue our use of "AngelEye" in the NICU; a secure camera system that allows mothers and their partners to keep a watchful eye on their babies even when not in the hospital. This facility for families receives much positive feedback. The option to access all teaching sessions and hospital meetings using a virtual platform is now standard, allowing the staff much greater flexibility and leading to increased attendance rates. Our Allied Health Professionals and Clinical Discharge Coordinators took virtual platforms a step further and now host a number of parental educational webinars and facilitated Q&A sessions on-line and these have been very well received by families. May I conclude by taking this opportunity to thank the entire neonatal team which includes consultant colleagues, our non- consultant hospital doctors, many of whom are with us for more than one year, our neonatal nursing staff under the excellent leadership of our CMM3, Ms Sara Rock, our allied health professionals, our multi-task assistants, our administrative staff and our dedicated household staff. We must also mention the many other ancillary services who support our work including the laboratory, pharmacy, radiology, infection control, ICT and bioengineering. We welcome two new Consultant Neonatologists, Dr Madeleine Murphy and Dr Mary O'Dea, to the team. Both of these posts are shared between NMH and CHI and therefore serve to enhance and improve the links between the two hospitals and allow for more streamlined follow-up of NMH babies transferred to CHI. Over 2024, a number of senior NICU staff retired/left the neonatal department, we thank them for their years of service. We are very grateful to our visiting consultants from Children's Health Ireland Crumlin and Temple Street for the service they provide in reviewing our babies and for their support and expert advice. I would like to thank all of those who contributed to the writing of this report. The time and effort invested is enormous and is much appreciated. Lastly, we acknowledge all the parents and babies who passed through our NICU in 2024, and in particular, the 19 babies who sadly died in our care. They remain in our thoughts. Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Neonatology (Shirley Moore) Shirley Moore has been accredited and registered to this post since 2014. The role of the Advanced Neonatal Nurse Practitioner, who is a Neonatal Resuscitation Program instructor, includes: clinical workload, training with the NCHDs and nursing staff, involvement in audit and education as well as local and national tenders and committees and simulation. The ANP is actively involved in a number of Random Control Trials (RCTs) in the unit and is a member of the research committee as well as a committee

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