Aim
To ensure that all Queensland Health clinicians who might attend a birth receive newborn resuscitation training that is consistent, accessible, multi-disciplinary, scenario-based, and sustainable.
Benefits
NeoResus standardises neonatal resuscitation training for all maternity and newborn care facilities in Queensland, including non-birthing sites, and ensures compliance with Clinical Skills Capability Framework (CSCF) requirements. The training equips clinicians, who may not commonly attend a birth, with the skills to confidently and effectively restore spontaneous respiration and adequate circulation in newborns.
Background
The vast majority of newborn infants will make the transition from intra-uterine to extra-uterine life successfully, and will not require any assistance to establish effective respiration after birth. Only a small minority of newborns (approximately 7 per cent of babies born in Australian hospitals) will require gentle assistance to make the transition from placental gas exchange to pulmonary gas exchange.
Less than 1 per cent of Australian newborns will require resuscitation interventions such as intubation and external chest compressions at the time of their birth. In many birth settings throughout Australia, a person with the expertise to perform such procedures may not be immediately available at the time of birth. With this in mind, the ability of the attending birth team to initiate first response assessment and interventions are seen as most critical and therefore the core focus of the NeoResus program.
Queensland Health NeoResus training is adapted from the Victorian Newborn Resuscitation Project to suit the Queensland context.
