2013 Annual Meeting and Quality Congress: October 4-6, 2013
Convening the Worldwide Community of Practice
Registration for the Vermont Oxford Network Annual Meeting and Quality Congress is officially open. The vision is clear - to provide every newborn infant and family with the best possible and continually improving neonatal care. You will not want to miss this important event.

Register soon to take advantage of early registration fees and to ensure that space is available in your preferred breakout sessions. Registration is open to Vermont Oxford Network members and non-members: attendees will include physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, dieticians, hospital leaders, allied health professionals, and NICU parent advisors.

Learn more about the cutting edge agenda, world class faculty and how to register at the Annual Meeting Page.

Presentations from the 2012 Annual Meeting are available at the Collaborative Learning Center.

iNICQ 2013: Controversies in Caring for Infants and Families Affected by Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome
In January, the Network successfully launched an internet-based quality improvement collaborative focused on Controversies in the Care of Infants and Families Affected by Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. The collaborative includes interdisciplinary teams from the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. The teams represent over 200 Level I, II, and III centers and three state-wide collaboratives, with approximately 3,500 healthcare providers participating. Learn more at the collaborative page.

Tikur Anbessa NICU Project; Volunteers Needed
Approximately 120,000 babies die every year in the first four weeks of life in Ethiopia. Currently, there is only one neonatologist in Ethiopia, based at the Tikur Anbessa Hospital, the major teaching hospital for Addis Ababa University. The Tikur Anbessa NICU also is staffed with 3 neonatology fellows, several consulting pediatricians, medical students, and 13 NICU nurses. The neonatal unit is able to accommodate as many as 60 patients and has an average daily census of between 20 and 40 infants.

Vermont Oxford Network, in partnership with Dr. Bogale Worku in the Department of Pediatrics at Addis Ababa University, supports teams from US hospitals to work alongside the NICU team at the Tikur Anbessa Hospital. Learn more about the Tikur Anbessa NICU Project and how you can get involved.

Maintenance of Certification
The American Board of Pediatrics has recently approved several of the Vermont Oxford Network Collaboratives, both NICQs and iNICQs, as a source of credit for Maintenance of Certification, Part 4. Learn more and review detailed criteria for submission.

Cochrane Neonatal Review Group (CNRG)
We recommend the Cochrane Neonatal Review Group (CNRG) as a great resource for our members. The CNRG is one of over 50 collaborative review groups of the Cochrane Collaboration. The CNRG produces and disseminates evidence-based, regularly updated reviews of the effects of therapies in neonatal-perinatal medicine.

The CNRG is funded by The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (USA). Reviews can be found in the Cochrane Library or on the NICHD web site which maintains an Internet archive of the neonatal reviews. VON co-sponsors a series of bi-yearly Cochrane web conferences that explore topics covered by Cochrane Reviews such as delivery room management and respiratory support.

A Community of Practice
This article, The Vermont Oxford Network: A Community of Practice, authored by the Directors of the Vermont Oxford Network was published in the March 2010 issue of Clinics in Perinatology. The article concludes: “... that the neonatology community is an evolving worldwide community of practice in which health professionals and families around the world are engaged in collective learning about our shared domain of human endeavor, providing high-quality and safe care to newborn infants and their families. The Vermont Oxford Network looks forward to providing the tools and resources to help this community of practice continue to grow and flourish. ” The full text of this article is available here.