Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the quality of the neonatal care delivered by an advanced neonatal nurse practitioner led service at Ashington Hospital, Northumberland.

Setting: Maternity service with no resident paediatric medical input.

Design: Comparison of quality measures on sentinel cases with five comparator hospitals using modified confidential enquiry.

Results: On six out of seven dimensions, the neonatal nurse practitioner service performed better than the average of the five comparator hospitals, and overall ranked second.

Conclusion: Good quality neonatal care can be delivered by advanced neonatal nurse practitioners alone, without the support of resident junior paediatricians.