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Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative

PAIRED Initiative

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The PAIRED Initiative has concluded. Learn more about our new NICU Initiative, Homeward Bound, recruiting until September 25, 2023!

Family-Centered Care in the NICU

Family-centered care (FCC) is a shared approach to the planning, delivery, and evaluation of health care that is grounded in mutually beneficial partnership among health care professionals, patients, and families. FCC assures that health care is responsive to priorities, preferences, and values of patients and their families. FCC recognizes that families are essential partners not only to improve the quality and safety of health care for the patient, but also to improve outcomes for the family.

The PAIRED Initiative

We have designed PAIRED to help NICUs develop and implement unit-specific strategies that will improve how a family engages with the NICU staff to assist in the care of their infant in a way that provides value to the family and to the NICU team. As its centerpiece project, this initiative will facilitate adoption or expansion of safe skin-to-skin care, which has a growing evidence base for achieving better infant and family outcomes.

PAIRED aims to improve family-centered care across the four domains of: participation in care and decision-making, individual recognition of each infant and family, respectful collaboration with families, and education for families about care after discharge,