Developmental care has been integrated into Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) since the 1980s. Care in the NICU can and should be guided by the infant, knowing that the infant has a unique developmental agenda and that caregivers need to understand and respect that agenda and the process leading up to it. Many caregivers perceive developmental care to improve outcomes by focusing on environmental factors, such as lights and sound, and supportive positioning of the infant. Moving beyond the focus of the environment, it is also necessary to be attuned to infants’ attempts to communicate their feeding desires, so we can provide cue-based feedings.

Program Objectives:
* Recognize cue-based feedings as a developmental care issue.

* Name three infant cues that indicate feeding readiness.

* Identify four caregiver interventions to facilitate infant feeding.

Faculty Name: Andrea C. Morris, MSN, RNC, CCRN

Title: Neonatal Clinical Nurse Specialist

Bio: Andrea C. Morris, MSN, RNC, CCRN is the neonatal clinical nurse specialist for Citrus Valley Medical Center’s level IIIB NICU in West Covina, CA. She has been in the NICU for over 25 years with a range of jobs from staff RN to ECMO specialist to CNS. She received her MSN in Parent-Child Nursing from the University of New Mexico and is currently completing her DNP in vulnerable populations from Western University of Health Sciences. She has lectured regionally and nationally on a variety of topics and has also contributed to and reviewed several neonatal texts.

Faculty Name: Sandra L. Gardner, RN MS CNS PNP

Title: Director of Professional Outreach Consultation

Bio: Sandra Gardner, RN, MS, CNS, PNP has worked in perinatal, neonatal, and pediatric care for the past 44 years as a clinician, practitioner, educator, author and consultant. She is the Director of Professional Outreach Consultation, a national and international consulting firm established in 1980. She is also senior editor of Handbook of Neonatal Intensive Care, ed 7, 2011.

Media Format(s): Print (English)