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Background:  Improving communication in healthcare improves the quality of care and patient outcomes, but communication between obstetric and neonatal teams before and during a high-risk delivery is poorly studied., Study Design:  We developed a survey to study communication between obstetric and neonatal teams around the time of a high-risk delivery. We surveyed neonatologists from North America and asked them to answer questions about their institutions' communication practices., Results:  The survey answers revealed variations in communication practices between responders. Most institutions relied on nursing to communicate obstetric information to the neonatal team. Although a minority of institutions used a standardized communication process to summon neonatology team or to communicate in the delivery room, these reported higher rates of information sharing and greater satisfaction with communication between services., Conclusion:  Standardized communication procedures are an underutilized method of communication and have the potential to improve communication around high-risk deliveries., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: None., (Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.)

Previously considered unavoidable complications of hospital care (reflecting an "entitlement" mental model), health care-associated infections are now considered as medical errors and cause significant preventable morbidity and mortality in neonates. Prevention of such infections, particularly central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), should be an important patient safety priority for all neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). An important first step is to promote a mental model of CLABSIs as preventable complications of care. Other general strategies are (1) promoting an organizational culture of safety and empowerment of staff; (2) hand hygiene; (3) avoiding overcrowding and understaffing; (4) using breast milk for enteral feedings; and (5) involving families in infection prevention efforts. Specific strategies to prevent CLABSI are (1) insertion practices: insertion of all central vascular catheters under strict sterile conditions with the aid of a checklist; (2) maintenance practices: ensuring that entries into the lumen of the vascular catheter always occur under aseptic conditions, minimizing catheter disconnections, and replacement of intravenous infusion sets at recommended intervals; (3) removal of all central lines as soon as possible. Participation in national or statewide quality improvement collaboratives is an emerging trend in neonatology that can enhance CLABSI prevention efforts by NICUs., (Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.)

Measurement of patient safety serves to identify opportunities to improve safety within a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), compare the safety of care provided by different NICUs, determine changes in response to safety interventions or programs, follow safety trends over time, and potentially deny payment for specific events. The ideal patient safety measures are rates of events derived from surveillance with valid and reliable detection of numerators (errors or adverse events) and denominators (the opportunities for errors or adverse events to occur). Methods used to identify these numerators and denominators include reporting, direct observation, videotaping, chart review, trigger tools, and automated methods. However, there are significant methodological and practical (feasibility) challenges to the accurate and reliable determination of rates of errors and adverse events. These include failure to detect and document such events, surveillance bias, lack of consistent definitions, frequent requirement for judgment in identifying and classifying challenges (which introduces interrater inconsistency), and need for significant additional resources., (Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.)