Project 6: Evaluating the care of preterm babies in the neonatal unit
Background
The Saving Babies' Lives Care Bundle (version 3) has been developed by the NHS in England and provides doctors, nurses and midwives with standards on how to provide the best care for women and their babies around the time of birth. Part of the Care Bundle focuses on how to provide the best care to babies born prematurely and includes nine things that should be done – 'care processes' – for groups of babies born at less than 34 weeks (6 weeks early). The nine care processes include steroids given to the mother before birth, antibiotics given to the mother during birth, making sure the cord is clamped at the best time, and ensuring that early maternal breast milk is given to the baby. These care processes are all based on previous research, but it is not known how many preterm babies in England receive some or all of them. We also don't know if babies who receive all or some of these care processes do better than babies that do not receive them.
Aims and Objectives
We want to:
- Describe how many preterm babies receive all or any combination of the nine care processes recommended in the Care Bundle.
- Describe whether the babies who receive all or some of the care processes have better health in early life.
- Explore whether getting all or some of the care processes is linked with other characteristics such as poverty or ethnicity of the mother.
Methods
We will use data that is already collected as part of standard NHS care on preterm babies who are admitted to a neonatal unit in England. This data is held in the National Neonatal Research Database. We will then analyse which babies receive the care processes and how this is linked with the babies' outcomes. We will be guided by a collaborative group of researchers, parents who have had a preterm baby, and organisations like NHS England, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine and other national audits.
Policy relevance & dissemination
This work will tell us how many babies receive these care processes, how well these care processes work in real life in the NHS, and whether there are groups of babies who don't get these care processes but who should be getting them. This work will help decide whether the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle, as it exists now, might need to be changed in future. The group working on this will write up a summary of our findings for people in government who make policy in maternity care. We will also produce an illustrated summary of our main findings that's easy to read.
Team
Principle Investigators: Christopher Gale and Maria Quigley
Co-investigators: Sarah Bates, Kate Fitzpatrick, Alex Heazell, Tony Kelly, Karen Luyt, Charlie Merrick, Neena Modi, Sam Oddie, Rachel Plachcinski, Dimitrios Siassakos, Lucy Smith.
Contact: maria.quigley@npeu.ox.ac.uk
