All Care is Developmental Care (202)

In this presentation, we discuss the importance of a recent phenomenon “All Care is Developmental & Neuroprotective Care” and the important implications for neonatal nursing. Growing evidence is shedding light on the impact of early life stress experienced by NICU infants, helping to shape how best we choose and implement intensive care strategies and therapies. This evidence highlights a greater emphasis on supporting neurophysiology and neuro-connections during caregiving. Although the NICU has always championed developmentally supportive care, it has often been viewed as the ‘nice to have’ and not ‘must-have’ activities. Now is the perfect time to align well-established developmentally supportive care with neuroprotective frameworks of caregiving. It is not possible to have one without the other. Just as neuropathways create connections within a vast neuro-network, similarly neurodevelopment relates to many other health and developmental outcomes such as stress resilience, sleep integrity, parental bonding. When every infant receives care that is individually tailored, developmentally appropriate, and neuroprotective, then we diminish inequities in the NICU. The main objectives of this presentation are to discuss the following: 1) Review the history of developmental care and contributions to implementation of neuroprotective strategies, 2) Discuss alignment between developmental and neuroprotective care to optimize NICU outcomes, 3) Address specific strategies for NICU implementation that will also enhance health equity efforts. Alignment of developmental care and neuroprotective encourages us to re-think about all neonatal care as developmentally appropriate and neuroprotective, and thus selecting and implementing activities in a way where all care is developmental and neuroprotective.