Neonatal / NICU Care Continuing Education Course Bundle #3 (10.5 Hours)

Anna Axelin’s academic career has included conducting quantitative and qualitative research on maternity and neonatal care in multidisciplinary and international research groups. In the Academic year 2011-2012, she joined the faculty of Department of Family Health Care Nursing in University of California San Francisco for her post-doctoral research. Since 2018, she was appointed as an associated researcher in the Department of International Maternal and Child Health at University of Uppsala in Sweden. In addition to the academic career, she has ten-year working experience as a NICU nurse.
She is leading the Health in Early Life and Parenthood (HELP) research group which aims to promote health and welfare in the early stages of life. Her special research interest is how to keep parents and sick newborns together throughout the infant hospital stay and strengthen their relationship already during pregnancy. Anna Axelin’s other research interests include pain and sleep in neonates, and the implementation of evidence-based practice in maternity and neonatal care with the help information technology.

Karen has worn a number of hats in her nursing career but always comes back to her passion for premature babies. Her background includes NICU nurse, transport nurse and NICU educator, rural nursing, staff development, pediatrics, pediatric intensive care, and community health. For over 20 years Karen has lead Calgary’s specialized “Neonatal Transition Team”, which she will talk about today. Karen has presented locally, nationally, and internationally and has also been co-investigator in several research and quality improvement studies examining outcomes for very low birth weight infants. For nearly 30 years, Karen taught, wrote instructional material, and produced on-line courses for nurses to earn a certificate in neonatal nursing through Mount Royal University. Karen is a past-president of the Canadian Association of Neonatal Nurses and served on this national board for 12 years, and on the international board of the Council for International Neonatal Nurses for 3 years. In 2019, Along with co-author, Tammy Sherrow, Karen published the book “Preemie Care: A guide to navigating the first year with your premature baby”.

Clinical nurse researcher in the area of breastfeeding preterm infants and skin-to-skin contact at dept. of Neonatology, Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet and leader of Knowledge Centre for Breastfeeding Infants with special needs. Member of the Nordic and Quebec Working Group expanding the BFHI for neonatal wards (Neo-BFHI).

M. Petrea Cober, PharmD, BCNSP, BCPPS, attended the University of Tennessee, College of Pharmacy in Memphis, Tennessee. She completed her PGY1 Pharmacy Residency at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and her PGY2 Pharmacy Residency in Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health System in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is currently the Clinical Coordinator - Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and PGY1 Residency Program Director at Akron Children's Hospital where she provides clinical services and precepts pharmacy students, PGY1 pharmacy residents, and PGY3 medical pediatric residents. She is also the Section Lead for Specialty Care and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED). Her didactic teaching is in the areas of pediatrics, women’s health, and nutrition. Dr. Cober's expertise is in pediatric pharmacotherapy, nutrition, ethanol lock therapy, and management of patients with intestinal failure. She is active in local, state, and national pharmacy organizations.

Dr. Wallman is an Assistant Professor at the Loretto Heights School of Nursing and the Coordinator of the Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Program. She has over 30 years’ experience as an NNP with clinical experience ranging from low to high risk neonates including air transport. She has had a particular interest in perinatal substance use disorders and the impact on the neonate and family. She has been the co-chair of the Perinatal Substance Abuse Advisory Panel for UCHealth North and on the Colorado Substance Exposed Newborn Steering Committee since 2008. In 2015 she was the recipient of the Colorado Nightingale Award and in in 2006 the Distinguished Service in Neonatal Nursing Award from the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. She also served as the only nurse in the nation on the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Fetus and Newborn where best practice standards for the care of neonates are developed and she currently serves on the Editorial Board of NeoReviews for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Dr Vicki Culling is the Director and principal trainer for Vicki Culling Associates. Vicki is a bereaved parent and has been actively involved in Sands (an organisation that supports families when a baby or child dies) for over fifteen years. The stillbirth of her first daughter led her to utilise her skills, in supporting bereaved parents and families and educating health professionals with in-person workshops and online learning. Vicki was a founding member of the NZ national Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee (PMMRC) set up in 2005 and charged with collecting data on perinatal and maternal mortality and morbidity in NZ. Vicki is a current member of the NZ Ministry of Health’s Maternal Fetal Medicine Governance Board and vice-Chair of the National Perinatal Pathology Clinical Governance Committee. She also works as a lay reviewer for the Medical Council of NZ and the Dental Council of NZ. She lives in Wellington with her husband Kevan and daughter Phoebe.

Dr. Jacqueline McGrath is a Professor and Vice Dean for Faculty Excellence at the UTH San Antonio, School of Nursing. Research foci include integration of family-centered and developmentally supportive caregiving with premature infants and their families in the NICU. More specifically, her work has focused on the biobehavioral outcomes of increasing parent engagement on both parents and the infant. Increasing parent engagement is believed to be a mechanism for increasing parent self-management skills after infant discharge and ultimately enhancing infant long-term development. She has also conducted studies related to preterm infants’ oral feeding readiness and preterm infant touch and massage (parent provided). Based on her research, she developed the NICU-PLAY program for parents and their hospitalized preterm infants. She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. McGrath is the Co-Editor for Advances in Neonatal Care the journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. In 2007, Dr. McGrath became a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She received her BSN from the University of Akron; MSN from Kent State University in parent-child nursing; both a post-master’s certificate as a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr Embleton has worked in neonatal medicine for the past 25 years, completing clinical training and a research doctorate in neonatal nutrition in the UK, and a neonatal fellowship in Vancouver, Canada. He has worked as a Consultant Neonatal Pediatrician in Newcastle, UK since 2002, one of the largest UK neonatal units, caring for sick preterm and term born neonates. He leads a broad portfolio of research focused on nutrition and gut health in preterm infants. Areas of work include determining patterns of early gut microbial colonization, and how these may predict the development of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and sepsis. He is a project team member of large neonatal feeding trials recruiting >5000 infants in the UK, as well as coordinating mechanistic studies using microbiomic and metabolomic analyses. He chairs the multi-disciplinary UK Neonatal Nutrition Network (N3) and is a member of the Committee of Nutrition for ESPGHAN.

Pamela Spivey is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and founder of Spivey Consulting, LLC. She shares her 34 years of expertise in neonatal nursing and leadership development as a national speaker, author and certified leadership coach. Pam launched her own business in 2015 to support individual clients and corporate teams through professional coaching, leadership development, and consultative services. Her unique experiences and passion for caring, drives her to “help nurses away from the wall and toward their possibilities”.

Dominic Wilkinson is Director of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medical Ethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. He is a consultant in newborn intensive care at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He also holds a health practitioner research fellowship with the Wellcome Trust and is a senior research fellow at Jesus College Oxford.

Dominic has published more than 130 academic articles relating to ethical issues in intensive care for adults, children and newborn infants. He is co-author (with Julian Savulescu) of ‘Ethics, Conflict and Medical treatment for children, from disagreement to dissensus’ (Elsevier, 2018). He is also the author of 'Death or Disability? The 'Carmentis Machine' and decision-making for critically ill children' (Oxford University Press 2013) ("the best book of the decade in bioethics... this is a book that must be read by everybody who is seriously interested in the bioethical issues that arise in neonatal intensive care or, more generally, in decision making for children with chronic, debilitating or life-threatening conditions." (John Lantos, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews). He was Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics from 2011-2018.