6 November 2019

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) has developed an e-learning programme to support maternity and emergency teams treating unexpectedly unwell newborn babies in community settings, in partnership with Health Education England’s e-Learning for Healthcare (HEE e-LfH) and The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Wendy Tyler

The Midwifery Identification, Stabilisation and Transfer of the Sick Newborn (MIST) programme is aimed at midwifery and ambulance colleagues to support the treatment plan for newborn babies who are, or have the potential to become, unwell following delivery in a community setting.

The resources are designed to equip maternity and emergency teams with the knowledge required to extend care beyond the first minutes after birth, up to and including handover to the neonatal team.

The programme was made possible after SaTH, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, made a successful bid for funding from Health Education England.

Wendy Tyler, Consultant Neonatologist at SaTH and project lead for MIST, said: “We are delighted to have been able to develop this important e-learning programme using our local MIST practical course materials, with support from HEE and our colleagues in Newcastle.

“The e-learning has been written by a multidisciplinary team from SaTH with myself and Dr Alan Fenton from Newcastle, a Consultant Neonatologist with experience in out-of-hospital care.

“The money we successfully bid for could have been used for learning that only benefitted SaTH, but we wanted to develop a nationally-available programme which would have a wider-reaching impact.”

The programme consists of four e-learning sessions and covers several clinical scenarios from normal health to significant illness. It is expected that by completing all four sessions within this programme, healthcare professionals will be able to:

• Recognise normal and abnormal infant colour (anaemia and cyanosis)
• Recognise normal and abnormal feeding patterns and abdominal signs
• Support an infant born unexpectedly preterm
• Support a baby born in an unexpectedly poor condition.

Each session will cover identification, management including stabilisation and communication, and transfer to a neonatal unit.

Wendy said: “Simply put, paramedics, midwives and maternity support workers can access this programme and use it to identify simple techniques which could save a baby’s life.”

For more information about the programme, including details of how to access the e-learning sessions, visit: https://www.e-lfh.org.uk/programmes/midwifery-identification-stabilisation-and-transfer-of-the-sick-newborn/