WIP 24 - Improving Family Involvement of Small Babies through Family Integration, Family Education and Multidisciplinary Teamwork

Poster Number: WIP 24
Publication Number: WIP 24.2629

Background: Partnering and educating families while in the NICU is critical for infant neurodevelopment, especially small babies who are admitted to the NICU for months. While family conferences have historically been held for medical decision-making discussions, there is an opportunity to empower families to be active partners in their infant’s care, support their infant’s neurodevelopment, promote understanding of the NICU journey, and enhance their overall NICU experience.

Objective: We are conducting a quality improvement project that aims to improve family involvement for infants born < 28 weeks or birthweight less than 1000g by providing family education and integration through family-centered multidisciplinary care conferences (FCCC). By April 2024, the project aims to implement targeted interventions to increase adherence to standardized FCCC protocol from 0 to 50%.

Design/Methods: For this QI project, we utilized the Model for Improvement methodology and created a key driver diagram to guide PDSA cycles of potentially better practices. URMC IRB review determined that this project does not satisfy criteria for human subjects research.
The FCCCs are conducted with a team that is comprised of social workers, occupational and music therapists, child life and lactation specialists, nursing management, parent educator, family advisor and physicians. FCCCs are scheduled around 1-4 weeks of life of the infant and are mainly conducted in person, but also offered virtually and in Spanish. The core content is focused on the benefits of family involvement in bedside care, skin to skin care, 2-person cares, oral immune therapy, family advocacy, transitions in the NICU and family and sibling support. As of October 17, 2023, we have conducted FCCCs for 34 infants and continue to enroll families as they become eligible. Outcome, process, and balancing measures are being tracked for special cause variation. Statistical process control charts are utilized to track data over time using QI Macros on Microsoft Excel.