Delivery Room Management
The successful transition from fetal to neonatal life involves many complex physiologic changes. Interventions during this time period have been shown to have a great influence on a baby’s future morbidities. Optimizing delivery room management of newborns provides many opportunities to impact outcomes positively with a lower occurrence of 
preventable illnesses. Through the active involvement of our stakeholders, the FPQC hopes to enhance awareness of this vital issue and develop a new data-driven, quality improvement (QI) initiative with standardized protocols that will result in healthier babies by aggressive standardized treatment during this “Golden Hour.” This Subcommittee is currently evaluating different aspects of delivery room management such as thermoregulation, targeted oxygen saturation levels and early respiratory interventions. Through standardization of protocols in delivery room management, our multidisciplinary and inter-professional team hopes to develop one or more specific QI areas of focus that will achieve the greatest impact for improving health outcomes with decreased morbidity while advancing the health care quality of Florida’s newborns.
Dr. Maya Balakrishnan – Assistant Professor/Department of Pediatrics, University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine – is the lead investigator on this proposed QI initiative. She is seeking volunteers for a diverse team that spans medical and patient care disciplines as well as various professions to support her in this project. If you are interested in joining this team, please contact fpqc@health.usf.edu to learn more on how you can be of assistance.
Improving Growth Outcomes in Premature Infants
Postnatal growth restriction is a common consequence of premature birth and has been associated with poor neurocognitive outcomes and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). 
If the intrauterine fetal growth trajectory is not achieved relative to the gestation and there is a falling off from that trajectory after birth, then the most common reason is inadequate nutrition – particularly inadequate protein intake. Some of the reasons for inadequate nutrition are biological, such as babies with GI diseases that limit intake; or, it may be the consequence of the feeding type (even fortified breast milk doesn’t fully meet the protein needs of preterm infants). Regardless of causation, there is enough variability in postnatal growth restriction (extra-uterine growth failure) demonstrated in various NICU databases, whereby babies born Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA) become Small for Gestational Age (SGA) prior to hospital discharge, to warrant further exploration. These observations make it imperative that growth restriction be minimized by the promotion of best practices and criteria to optimize growth in as many preterm infants as possible. For this reason, the FPQC’s Infant Health Advisory Subcommittee deemed it important to take on the challenge of developing a quality improvement (QI) toolkit for Florida that would help optimize nutritional management of the premature infant and reduce the occurrence of postnatal growth failure.
Dr. Shahnaz Duara – Professor/Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine – is the lead investigator on this proposed QI initiative. She is seeking volunteers for a diverse team that spans medical and patient care disciplines as well as various professions to support her in this project. If you are interested in joining this team, please contact fpqc@health.usf.edu to learn more on how you can be of assistance.