JGH shares in major nursing grant to improve neonatal intensive care

The Jewish General Hospital is among six Quebec hospitals and four universities that are sharing a grant of $250,000 to improve nursing care in intensive care units for premature infants and their families.

The Better Care grant, provided by the Order of Nurses of Quebec, will generally be used to harmonize and implement best practices, such as support for breastfeeding. It will also help to foster healthy neonatal development through proper lighting and noise levels, and the comfortable positioning of the babies.

Claudia Cinquino, a Nursing Care Consultant in the JGH Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, says the JGH, the McGill University Health Centre, Sainte Justine Hospital, Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, the Sherbrooke University Health Centre and the Quebec University Health Centre will each receive $25,000. Representatives from these institutions will then meet to determine their priorities in neonatal care and decide what the specific focus of their work will be.

An additional $100,000 will also be provided to the Virtual Community for Neonatal Practice (la Communauté virtuelle de pratique Neon@t)—a provincial body that encompasses all 10 institutions—to develop methods of standardizing care, advancing research and sharing best practices.

Johanne Boileau, Director of Nursing for CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, says adopting and sharing evidence-based practices is crucial to all types of improvements in health care, since it leads to optimal patient outcomes.

According to the Order of Nurses of Quebec, nearly 6,000 infants are born prematurely in the province each year, with about 1,200 born before the 32^nd week of pregnancy. To help improve these babies’ chances of living a healthy life, this year’s Better Care grant is intended to help improve interprofessional collaboration, enable data to be shared more efficiently, and allow best practices to be implemented more effectively.

Each year since its launch in 2013, the Best Care grant has been supporting the evolution of various areas of nursing through projects that improve care and recognize the contribution of nurses in the continuum of care.