The innovative research helping premature babies beat the odds
Each month, clinical staff at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Royal North Shore Hospital meet to share updates on their quality improvement projects and possible new areas to advance.
At the Clinical Practice Improvement Club or “CPI Club” as it is known, junior and senior nurses and medical staff are encouraged to develop and lead grassroots projects that help improve care for premature babies on the ward. Department Head and Neonatology Specialist, Dr Eveline Straub, says the club highlights how crucial research is at every level – from small investigations on the ward to multicentre national and international trials. “It’s not just big trial results that we implement but also observations made by nursing staff,” she says.
Where infant survival at 24 weeks was once remarkable, today babies born at 22 or 23 weeks are increasingly beating the odds, thanks to decades of research and clinical innovation. Eveline says that aside from the monthly club meeting, the unit consistently has three or four clinical trials running, alongside investigator-led studies. One international multicentre trial is testing a new method of giving a preterm baby surfactant, a natural lung lubricant that is missing when they are born at less than 34 weeks.
The NICU research team: Dr Eveline Straub, Emily Harrison and Joanne Parker
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Tomorrow’s medicine today
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