Evaluation of new out-of-hospital life support course published

An evaluation of an out-of-hospital new-born life support (OHNLS) course co-authored by Health Innovation South West and researchers from across the country, has been published in the British Paramedic Journal.

The course was delivered by the Resuscitation Council to two cohorts of mostly midwives and paramedics at the Health Innovation South West office in November 2022.

Our role was to evaluate the course, including assessing self-reported confidence of participants to deliver newborn life support in the community, across seven domains:

1. Airway management for a newborn baby
2. Cardiac compressions for a newborn baby
3. Management of a preterm baby at birth
4. Thermal care for a newborn baby
5. Transportation of a newborn baby
6. Assessment of the need for the apparently well baby to be taken into hospital
7. Communication with the parents about the condition of the baby.

Qualitative analysis of participants’ experience noted three main themes:

1. A lack of exposure and training around out of hospital neonatal life support had previously caused fear and anxiety and a lack of confidence.
2. Practically, the course led to participants cascading their learning and sourcing new equipment to support newborn safety.
3. The identification of barriers to caring for newborns outside of hospital, in particular the lack of appropriate or available equipment.

The findings showed that the proof-of-concept course led to a significant increase in practitioner reported confidence in the immediate management of babies born out of hospital. However, further evaluation is needed to assess the long-term impact of the training and whether this leads to improved outcomes in a larger group of participants.

This work also links to the Babies Born Outside of Hospital (BBA) project, led by Associate Professor Laura Goodwin at the University of West of England, to drive improvements in urgent care for newborns, which we funded in 2022 as part of our Perinatal Programme.

You can read a summary of the journal article here.