Dietitians (NDIGuk)

Useful information/websites

Neonatal Networks

A review of neonatal intensive care services by a national review group produced a report in April 2003 for comment by July 2003.The resulting Strategy for Improvement recommended that all neonatal care should be provided within agreed managed Networks made up of hospitals with different types of neonatal units working together. Mothers and babies should receive their care within that network or very occasionally an adjacent network. Networks will align with maternity/obstetric care. Each network would need a supervisory structure and within a managed clinical network one clinician would need to accept a co-ordinating advisory role.

It will be interesting to see where dietitians will fit into this structure. For more information visit: www.doh.gov.uk/nsf/neonatal.htm where the report of the Neonatal Intensive Care Services Review Group can be viewed. Further details of individual networks is available on the BAPM website www.bapm.org/networks_info

Neonatology on the Web

This is a website developed and maintained by Ray Duncan MD around his interest in neonatology and contains some useful links and personal views. Can be found at www.neonatology.org or www.neonatology.net or www.neonatology.com and links with NICU-NET

UNICEF baby friendly website

UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative – this UK website contains a lot of useful information on all aspects of breastfeeding promotion including the WHO 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. There are many links on the website at www.babyfriendy.org.uk

Zetoc alerts

Zetoc in partnership with MIMAS (Manchester Information & Associated Services) provides access to the British Libraries Electronic Table of Contents of around 20,000 current journals and 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. It is free to members of the NHS in England and Scotland. It includes an email alerting service, so that users can receive notification of relevant new data. It is available at zetoc.mimas.ac.uk. It gives reference titles and has a link to abstracts and sometimes the full article via an Athens username and appropriate subscription.

Gaining and growing

Gaining and Growing website - depts.washington.edu/growing - this site was designed to promote post discharge growth and development of preterm infants, especially those born weighing <1500g, by providing easy access to up-to-date nutrition and feeding information for community health care professionals in the Pacific North West of America in the hope that assuring adequate nutritional status will improve outcomes and family life for these children. Although it has a lot of useful information, it is American and may differ from UK practice and was last reviewed in 2000.

California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative

This was an initiative proposed by the California Association of Neonatalologists.

CPQCC advocates not only superior patient care, but also efficiency in resource allocation and utilization. Quality improvement activities are aimed at identifying desired outcomes and promoting best practice. Both the patient and the payer are considered when formulating best practice. Health care providers and academic researchers benefit from the database.

Two excellent nutrition toolkits are available on the site, the first on human milk and lactation (Feb 2004) and the second covering parenteral nutrition, feeds other than human milk and issues around feeding in preterm infants (March 2005). These are available at www.cpqcc.org/qualityimprovement.htm

You can register to receive updates via the following email address courtney@cpqcc.org.

Sharp Mary Birch Hospital

A women’s hospital in San Diego with a website providing information on their NICU, including a section on Breastfeeding the High Risk Newborn. This can be found at www.sharp.com/kidsHealth/content.cfm?home=1&pageid=P02343