Hello Friends 👋
In this episode of Neo News, Eli, Ben, and Daphna bring you the neonatal stories making waves in mainstream media. This series is your go-to source for staying updated on what your patients and their families are reading in the news. From an in-depth look at the year following a denied abortion to the concerning case of fractures found in NICU infants, the team unpacks the stories shaping public perception and clinical practice.
They’ll also discuss trending research, including disparities in safe sleep practices, the role of language in grant success, and the latest insights on parental mental health in the NICU. Plus, a look at long-term outcomes of antenatal steroids and the power of pre-delivery checklists for infants with complex conditions.
Neo News offers a unique opportunity for clinicians to bridge the gap between medical expertise and public discourse—ensuring you're prepared for the questions and concerns parents may bring to the bedside.
Have an article you think we should cover? Send it our way! Tune in and stay informed.
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The articles covered on today’s episode of the podcast can be found here 👇
Deep Dive:
The year after a denied abortion (Propublica) https://projects.propublica.org/the-year-after-a-denied-abortion/
Former Nurse Is Charged After Newborn Is Found With Fractures (NY Times) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/virginia-babies-icu-nurse-charged.html
Research in the news
US News: Nonsupine sleep positioning and disparities https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-12-12/too-many-u-s-babies-still-sleep-in-positions-that-raise-sids-risk
Healio: Promotional language & grant success https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20241211/women-less-likely-to-use-promotional-language-in-research-grant-applications-vs-men
You may have heard:
AAP: When breastfeeding problems arise in infant with tongue-tie, don’t jump to surgery https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/29421/AAP-When-breastfeeding-problems-arise-in-infant
Journal of Perinatology: Understanding and addressing mental health challenges of families admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit https://www.nature.com/articles/s41372-024-02187-9
Pediatrics: Health Outcomes 50 Years After Preterm Birth in Participants of a Trial of Antenatal Betamethasone https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/155/1/e2024066929/200341/Health-Outcomes-50-Years-After-Preterm-Birth-in
Journal of Perinatology: Structured pre-delivery huddles enhance confidence in managing newborns with critical congenital heart disease in the delivery room https://www.nature.com/articles/s41372-024-02196-8
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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇
Eli (00:04.097)
Hello everybody and welcome to our second episode, second annual, now that we're in 2025, episode of Neo News. Ben, Daphna, how are you guys?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (00:18.937)
We're good, glad to be back.
Ben (00:19.938)
I'm good. I'm good. very happy that we are recording this second episode of Neo News. It was a lot of fun and very interesting to do the first one. And it's a whole new skill, you know, to peruse the sort of, I call this the mainstream media, the media, whatever that is. But like to start reading different kinds of articles, it's much more enjoyable. I forgot how painful...
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (00:34.701)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (00:45.444)
scientific papers sometimes can be, you read these articles from the New York times or whatever ProPublica this week and it's like, this is kind of like, it just reads like a book. It's fun.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (00:54.649)
Yes and no. I mean, we'll get into it, but sometimes you're like, God, we're going to have to be, this is coming down the pipe for all of us. But yeah, no, it's been good. We've gotten a lot of good feedback. So definitely for people to keep it coming. And if they see something in the news that they think we should cover to send it our way.
Ben (01:02.211)
Hahaha
Ben (01:14.36)
We have to give Eli some congratulations. Some congratulations are in order. Eli, for the audience who, we don't have to. So no congratulations, but for the people who are following your journey, you have matched in fellowship and you'll be going to California. Excited?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (01:19.032)
Mm-hmm.
Eli (01:21.557)
We don't have to.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (01:22.873)
You
Eli (01:35.571)
Excited. It's frosty over here in Boston. So only swimsuits for the next three years, but thank you guys. Yeah excited to Listen excited to finally, you know do thank you by the incubator podcast sort of as an almost maybe someday neonatologist instead of a maybe never but possibly sometime neonatologist and
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (01:41.753)
That's it.
Ben (01:42.754)
Yeah. Stanford is lucky to have you.
Ben (01:57.924)
Yeah, the only negative is that now we're going to have to wrestle with the time difference for scheduling these episodes.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (02:04.665)
Oof.
As if we weren't challenged enough to make this work. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out.
Ben (02:09.028)
One thing at a time though. We'll figure it out.
Eli (02:13.237)
That's it, that's it. And now you guys really can boss me around to do anything that you want. It is just free reign, baby, out here. I'm your guy.
Ben (02:22.094)
First
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (02:23.289)
I'm not sure they extend those attending privileges all the way here to Florida for us.
Ben (02:28.97)
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Eli (02:30.369)
All right, well, no one told me. Anyway, listen, here we are, we're sitting. is Tuesday, January 7th. Interesting day to be recording this, a lot in the news for sure. But I am wondering, I hope you guys had a nice holiday. I hope you got some rest.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (02:40.94)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (02:48.792)
Yeah, I have not. I have not been yet. I knew...
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (02:49.847)
No, I got some rest, Ben did not get some rest during the house.
Ben (02:53.752)
But it's all good. The rest is coming up. have a bit of time off at the end of January, so I'll take advantage of that, but it's all good.
Eli (03:01.865)
Awesome. Well, listen, I want to share one of my favorite parts about the holidays, but before we go any further, why don't we just say, to a reminder to all of our listeners, all the new, this segment is called neo news. And the goal of the segment is to, keep neonatologists in touch with what's buzzing in the news. And frankly, what our patients are, are seeing and hearing in all those.
many, many moments throughout the day, throughout the weeks, throughout the months, that we are not at their bedside counseling them. And the goal is to provide a little bit of insight about what's cooking so that we can speak maybe in a little bit more of a horizontal way with our patients and also to be transparent about situations, as we'll discuss in this episode, where patients may be
inclined to distrust or may re concerning things in the news. And, we can't just ignore that. I think, hopefully it's a value for us to, educate ourselves on that so we can educate our patients.
Ben (04:11.332)
For sure. We have a lot of interesting articles to cover today. I am wondering if you have one particular you want to start with.
Eli (04:21.993)
Absolutely. So, you know, one of my favorite things about the end of the year is you get these, you get these year end lists. you know, we get, we got the award cycles. think the golden globes just happened. Maybe I saw something about that. Maybe Shogun won everything. You also get a year end lists, in journalism, which, for me always serve as a reminder of all the things that, that I missed. and I think the first story, that, I was hoping we could talk about this, this episode is.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (04:27.929)
Mm-hmm.
Eli (04:51.253)
something I saw on one of these year-end lists. It's by two journalists at ProPublica and it's called the year after denied abortion. And I just want to start maybe by setting the stage, reading the beginning of this story for us to set the stage for this story and also for the rest of what we'll talk about today. So the story starts when she got pregnant, Mayron Michelle Hollis was clinging to stability.
At 31, she was three years sober after first getting introduced to drugs at 12. She had just had a baby three months earlier and was working to repair the damage that her addiction had caused her family. The state of Tennessee had taken away three of her children and she was fighting to keep her infant daughter, Zoe. Department of Children's Services investigators had accused Mayron of endangering Zoe when she visited a vape store and left the baby in a car. Her husband, Chris Hollis was also in recovery.
The two worked in physically demanding jobs that paid just enough to cover rent, food, and lawyers fees to fight the state for custody of Mayron's children. In the midst of this tumult in July, 2022, they learned Mayron was pregnant again, but this time doctors warned her. She and the fetus might not survive. The rest of the story really gets into, despite that guidance from doctors.
what life looked like after Mayer was, was not able to have an abortion, because of the new anti-abortion laws in the state of Tennessee. And I think for all the stories guys that we've read about the challenges posed by these anti-abortion laws, this was the first one that I saw that really documented in a deeply vivid way what life looks like, not just in the first couple of days and couple of weeks after.
a birthing person is unable to get an abortion, but what it looks like as far as a year out. And I'm curious as the two of you read this story, what, what stood out to you? Uh, you know, her daughter, Elena ends up being born at 26 weeks and, and the rest of the story is about their first year together.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (07:06.819)
Well, I think there's a number of things to discuss. Obviously, we talked about the abortion laws and the increase in infant mortality following those laws in the last episode. we won't, I think, belabor that point. But I think it's a good reminder of like what all of our, so many of it, maybe not all of our families, but a lot of our families are going through. I think we don't recognize how much
What a mountain families have to climb. And then sometimes we say like, why aren't the families here? Why aren't they doing more? Why didn't they get the car seat? Why don't they have a pediatrician appointment? But I mean, they're really just barely keep holding it together, you know? And then to leave with a child with any degree of medical complexity to a society that really does. That's my take-home point. And that was part of the discussion was
especially in the laws with the most restrictive abortion rules, let's say legislation, they have the least support, the least societal support in those states. So I think that's something we have to remember. Our society is not really built for any birthing parent. It's not optimized for parents of young children. It's not optimized for people with chronic illness.
And we have these families for just like a moment of their lives. like, what can we do? I don't know. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. What can we do for families? But maybe that's something to open the discussion. I don't know what we can do for families when they have such obstacles to overcome.
Ben (08:56.738)
Yeah, I agree, Daphna. I have a lot of thoughts about this story. This piece is so interesting because it shows how a family that, as you presented, Eli, in the beginning, is basically just getting by with one child, ends up unraveling with the addition of a second with some medical complexity. And it's really striking to see this poor couple
really go through all these different struggles and not really being able to remain cohesive as a family. I did not really like the framing of the story because I understand that this begins in the context of abortion laws in, I forget which state, Tennessee, in the state of Tennessee, because I think that it's more of a piece on, like Daphna said, societal issues.
it was very interesting to me, especially as I am an American as of, as of, as of a couple of years back, but still from a, from a foreign perspective, it's interesting to see how all these mechanisms that are very punitive are able to kick in automatically. whenever something, whenever there's a suspicion, DCF, the police, the judicial system kicks in automatically with, without parents needing to make phone calls or whatever.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (10:11.609)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (10:23.256)
but this is really not the same for support, as you mentioned, Daphna. So it was really striking to me to see how much they had to deal with. But I didn't want the story to be framed in the context of the abortion because it sort of puts the blame away from society and puts it more on abortion. I felt like this baby was born at 26 weeks and it's a beautiful thing that this baby survived. And society should be able to help this family care for these two infants.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (10:41.241)
Thank
Ben (10:51.266)
and not put them in a position where like, well, if you had had the abortion, then it would all be better because you wouldn't have that extra baby. it's, it's, it's, to me, it feels like society needs to do better. there was one piece of the part of the story where actually, it talks about my, my run is, is her name, visiting her daughter in the hospital. And at some point she mentions how they mentioned how she's working and so on. So she ends up sleeping in the parking lot, inside her car.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (11:07.705)
Thank
Ben (11:18.956)
And as I was reading that, was wondering myself, I'm like, how many of my parents in the NICU are actually sleeping in the car on the parking lot? I have no idea. We're trying to do a better job in our particular NICU in understanding these sort of constraints from the families. But we just realized that the people that we have in the NICU into the lives of our parents is very limited and we don't maybe get to see all the things they have to deal with.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (11:22.061)
Mm-hmm.
Eli (11:25.215)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (11:39.383)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (11:44.535)
Yeah, I think when we think, like what can we do? What can we do moving forward? And we'll talk about this in another paper down the line. But you know, they do bring up this box. If you've not seen the article, it's actually quite nice to read. It's like a, it's an expose. It's a photography project alongside the story. But they have this box about parental leave. And I'll just read it. That research indicates access to paid family leave is linked to a decrease in infant death.
Ben (11:59.684)
and expose kind of, yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (12:14.157)
and better economic, physical and mental health for new parents. Currently, 13 states only, I should say, currently only 13 states have some form of paid parental leave to care for newborns. No states that have banned abortion offer paid parental leave. And I think that is a place where neonatologists, pediatricians, those of us in advocacy roles, all of us can get into an advocacy role and support paid parental leave.
That's my call to action from reading this article, think.
Eli (12:50.143)
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I have to say, I love that we're using the term here, families, over and over again, because I think, sometimes when we're talking about research, we're talking about clinical care, we're talking about mom or baby. Mom and baby. We're not talking about families and even, you know, talking about a birthing person and a child as a dyad, think loses social context.
And if this story was about anything for me, it's about how much context there is to welfare, wellbeing, child development. Daphna, I'm so glad that you brought up the pay and parental leave point because they highlight a bunch of different policies that legislators could enact, any one state could enact to support families.
Those include disability payments. Those include unemployment benefits. Those include childcare subsidies. Those include universal access to high quality early intervention. Those include food stamps and cash assistance. And you look at the suite of possibility for supporting children, including, by the way, I mean, one thing that we're not talking about right now is
whether or not the 26 week or because I think from what we glean, this 26 week or did amazingly well, all things considered. And just to think about how against the odds that is in a society that is not offering so many of these supportive policies.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (14:18.115)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ben (14:18.382)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (14:32.665)
Yeah, it's a great point. Great point.
Ben (14:34.122)
Yeah, there's a stoic exercise that's known as pre-meditatio malorum, where basically if you want to not have an anxious outlook on life, you can foresee everything basically going wrong. And this exercise is supposed to make you feel better about your day to day. And it's interesting too.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (14:53.709)
What if that's something you just do on the regular? It's not like an exercise. It's like here.
Ben (14:58.766)
Yeah. But what's interesting often when you perform this exercise that you realize that you're actually many, many steps away from catastrophic things happening. And to me, this article was a bit of an exercise in premeditation-malorum, where you can see what are the steps that it took for this family to go from stable to completely wrecked one iota at a time. And I think that
This is something that we don't tend to think of, meaning that some parents, some families are not that far away from being in a catastrophic situation. I think for all of us, fortunately, we are in a position where we have jobs and we have education and we have, and so on and so forth. But then you see in this piece, like little strings being pulled on that end up making the whole edifice unravel. And it's quite frightening to think that it doesn't take this much for...
I mean, it doesn't take this much for people to get into that position and reach the point of homelessness, for example, or I don't know. mean, yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (16:02.391)
Sure. Well, and I mean, to your point, Ben, I think it's especially important for our community because I think families like that are overrepresented in the NICU. And so I think that's, it's not all our families, not in all states, not in all hospitals, but most of our NICUs, you know, have a lot more families that are closer to catastrophe, as you say, than in maybe other healthcare settings.
Ben (16:29.1)
Absolutely. so I think, yeah, yeah.
Eli (16:30.113)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so much of this social pathology, if you look at the risk factors for prematurity, know, premature labor, premature birth, um, so many of those risk factors are social pathologies, not medical pathologies. And certainly there's a whole list of medical pathologies that predict that, but so many other things are related to, um, you know, poverty and economic circumstance, inability to access healthcare, um, uh, inability to get a vision.
Ben (16:44.558)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli (17:00.085)
transportation to healthcare, all these different issues that are, you know, as Ben, you said, maybe just humble us as physicians in terms of what fraction of a role maybe we play both in, you know, ensuring children are safe and survive the peripartum period, but also the things that we can do in the longer term to support them.
Ben (17:29.454)
Yep, yep, a very interesting article. What else is on our docket today, Eli?
Eli (17:35.593)
Yeah, yeah, totally. think in more lighthearted news, something that's been making the rounds is. Yeah, yeah, we're really, really, you know, now we're done with our holiday joy and we're just into the doom and gloom of January and six months until summer. But a story that's been making the rounds that I think is important to discuss is about.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (17:44.601)
don't think you could say this is more lighthearted.
Eli (18:03.861)
this Virginia NICU nurse, Erin Strotman, who has been charged with malicious wounding and felony child abuse after three babies were discovered with unexplained fractures in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia. And in addition to those three babies, there were four more babies the year prior with these similar sort of unexplained fractures that they experienced.
and it seems from the investigation so far, we don't have many details that, this, this nurse may have played some role. I, this whole investigation, have to say, makes me pretty uncomfortable, as a, as a health provider. we assume, assume the best in our, our, colleagues. what do the two of you think coming across this story and processing it?
Ben (18:59.748)
Yeah, I think it's an important story to discuss. were these clusters of fractures that led to the administration of the hospital holding off on admitting any new babies to the NICU. The state, the police was involved and this nurse has been charged in this case. Now, I don't think that the goal here is for us to try to shed light on what happened or what's going on. We don't know.
But when I read the story, what strikes me right now is the fact that when you talk about a NICU and you talk about fractures, it's not the same as any other unit because we know that our babies born preterm are at a very high risk of developing what's known as metabolic bone disease, rickets of prematurity, whatever we want to call it, and have a high risk for developing pathological fractures. And so you read this and you wonder, this...
fractures that are caused by metabolic bone disease that are interpreted in a different manner, or is it something else? And like I said, we don't really know. But I think that what's scary for us, because again, I do not want to get into what's happening at that NICU. I don't know. There's an investigation in progress, and we will have more information later. But I feel like it's important for us because
we deal with patients who have metabolic bone disease on a day-to-day basis. And we have, I have had experience of babies having fractures secondary to rickets of prematurity in the NICU. How we go about handling those and discussing this with family, I think is going to be much more heightened and will have to be done much more delicately. I think that you cannot currently with this story being covered by the Washington Post, by the New York Times, by the New York Post, by...
many other outlets, you cannot go about a family and say, yes, babies are at risk of metabolic bone disease and your baby has a fracture of the femur. Any other questions for me today? That is not going to go well. You need to be sensitive to the fact that this is making the rounds and that we do not want families to be under the impression that their babies are mistreated or abused inside the NICU. I think that is the big takeaway for me, for the people listening to this episode, because
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (21:12.067)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (21:18.092)
If a baby has a fracture in your NICU secondary to metabolic bone disease, do not send your student to go talk to the family because this might snowball into a much more complicated situation. You want to make sure your communication is absolutely perfect. Then the other takeaway for me is this whole idea of the nurse being charged. And actually, I think she's being incarcerated, right? She's in jail right now, according to these articles.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (21:24.685)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (21:46.668)
I think it's important for us to mention that she is linked to one case, which makes you think, okay, being linked to one case of a baby with fracture could mean, could it be that, mean, how many of us nurses as well have taken care of a baby that had developed fractures? Like, I hope that they have some form of additional evidence that goes beyond the fact that it is actually suspicious for child abuse. But it also makes me think that as physicians, we often enter the workplace.
thinking, well, it's my license that's on the line. I'm the one who stands to lose so much as a physician because I've invested so much money in my education and my license is my livelihood. So it's all on me. I think this story plus if you've, if for the people who have been following the similar story out of England of this nurse who had been accused of being involved in the deaths actually of several NICU babies.
reminds us that the nurses are active partners and they do tend to lose a lot by caring for babies in the NICU. And so it reminds me that we should not sort of stand on our ivory tower and say, in our ivory tower and say, well, this is all about me and protecting my license. I think we are all putting our license on the line and our lives on the line as we care for the babies of other people. so we should be probably a bit more sensitive to that as well.
So what happened to be honest with you to me is secondary. really just, my real hope is that this is not something that was metabolic bone disease related fractures that got out of hand, that the narrative got out of hand and turned into this massive investigation. So if, and hopefully that's not the case, there'll be more information coming down. And then in the meantime, we just have to be very careful about how we communicate about this issue with our patients in our NICU.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (23:39.737)
Yeah, I agree with everything you said and to a broader extent, especially around communication with families. There are some things that we can predict in babies that we really don't spend a lot of time discussing with families. You're like, when it happens, we'll talk to them about it. But parents deserve to know, I think, what their babies are at risk for. Things like wounds or breakdown from the CPAP mask or...
You know, it bothers them so much and we could have told them about it. The indents from an NG tube or a prolonged endotracheal tube and certainly fractures. And I think when we're honest with parents about those things upfront, then when they happen, they seem less catastrophic for families. Now, if there's malicious intent anywhere, you know, with the healthcare professional, then so be it. they, you know, they deserve the full.
legislative or legal review, judicial review, to get what they get. I think, though, the other thing I take away is it's easier for hospital systems to look for a person to blame than to say, maybe there's a problem with the way we, you know, with our feeding policies or with our positioning policies, or are we doing two-person care for the babies at risk? So
I'm not sure our root cause analysis always get to the root cause. you know, especially you alluded to the other story, the, what this let be story out of the UK, where when you look at some of the data, it's a little, it's a little complicated and confusing as to now that lady was also charged and sentenced, but, you wonder like, is there stuff they're not looking at to get to what would really protect babies? Like, are we really doing?
what protects babies. And we see this all the time. put in, somebody in the hospital puts in a policy to prevent XYZ and you're like, actually, I don't think that prevents XYZ at all, but it gives people something to check off the box. And are we really preventing CLABSIs or are we really preventing by doing some of these, I don't know, less, less.
Ben (25:44.877)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (25:51.648)
And to your point, this nurse is involved in one case. that means what about the other ones? And I feel like we, like you said, we want to blame someone and say, this is the evil, right? The what is it? The evil nurse that was harming the babies. But again, are you looking at the real problem? I don't know. Very scary stuff. Very scary stuff. what are you What are your thoughts?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (25:55.287)
Yeah.
Eli (26:13.686)
Yeah.
I mean, I agree with what a lot of you both said. I think, on the one hand, we know that, premature infants in particular can have so many different consequences of so many different organ systems. And in a way, all of those are, are predictable in the sense that statistically the rates are higher in that population than other populations. Like we can predict that they are at higher risk.
I think the challenge of course is like when I think it, when I look at my consult note that I file for prenatal consults, it's impossible to talk through every piece of information. And sometimes it's at the cost of your relationship with the patient for you to go in depth into every possible consequence of prematurity rather than trying to assess where your patients are at. But it does sort of demonstrate to me the value of
those daily conversations. mean, you know, sometimes on a busy day, you call the patient once you get a voicemail, you say, well, try back later. Maybe you never get to it. They don't hear from you. Maybe that snowballs over a weekend. They go three, four days. Maybe those are the three, four days in which the baby gets medical neck. And you're like, God, know, where, you know, how could I have salvaged this relationship? And I think it's the little things that we repeatedly do in the room or otherwise communicating with patients.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (27:16.313)
You
Ben (27:34.584)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (27:35.161)
Mm.
Eli (27:40.661)
I think the other thing that it highlights is just there's so much fear. There's so much anxiety in the NICU and it's so difficult to understand. I mean, it's hard for us to understand the of physiology sometimes. And we've been doing this. We've been in medical education for, you know, I've been in medical education for nearly a decade before I even begin to have a semblance of a consistent role in the NICU to say nothing of our families. And I think for us to continue to remember
you know, with humility, just how much fear and anxiety there is in situation when you don't understand anything that's going on, to say nothing to when you do. And it was a reminder to me that way.
Ben (28:18.713)
Yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (28:22.711)
Yeah, I think the only other thing I'll add is, know, it's must be so like you said, so hard for families to leave their babies with us, right? Like that's their little person. And they don't know us. Maybe they had a prenatal consult with somebody on the team and to really put their trust in us, especially unlike other pediatric units where, you know, for the most part, across the country, parents are not staying around the clock in the in the NICU, not in the states anyways.
Ben (28:49.95)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (28:52.159)
and to put their trust in us. so certainly I think we should evaluate every concern for wrongdoing because our families deserve that. And we can't have people in place that are doing malicious things. And I hope we kind of take a broader approach to these papers and say, yeah, let's open up lines of communication with families and get to the root cause of problems.
Eli (29:20.033)
Absolutely, So let's keep moving here. The next story, I think you guys know me well enough to know that sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS, is something that I find very, very interesting, very tragic, and also very interesting in terms of a harm reduction approach, what we can do about it. There was a study that ran a JAMA network open and then was picked up by US News that described that
Uh, you know, 12 % of four month old babies in, in the U S are still put to bed lying on their sides or their tummies. And that number worsens over time by nine months. It's 19 % of babies who are sleeping in unsafe positions. And by one year is 23%. Um, and this is despite everything that we tell ourselves that we, do in terms of education around, uh, safe sleep.
And so I wonder when, when you guys look at those statistics and we'll, get into some additional statistics in certain subgroups, but just that face value, when you hear about those statistics, almost a quarter of babies at one year are sleeping in unsafe positions. And we, know, that that's agnostic to what, what milestones they've reached or not. But, what do you think of, of that, that statistic?
Ben (30:44.792)
Yeah, go ahead.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (30:44.971)
I was going say, I mean, I'm not surprised. I'm really not surprised. mean, to parents' credit, they're really trying to do whatever they can to get their babies to sleep. again, I like to get to what is my take-home point as someone who works in a NICU. My take-home point is...
I'll speak for my unit. We're not doing 100 % modeling for this behavior, right? And so they say, well, in the NICU, the nurse said the only way my baby, the nurse and our doctor said the only way my baby would sleep well is if they were on their tummy. And then we tell these parents, you know, we couldn't get your baby to sleep on their back, but you take it home and you get it to sleep on your back, on its back, which is like absurd. And yes, we have monitoring and yes, okay, all these things, but
In those last few weeks, we got a model that for parents that it's possible for their infant to sleep on their back without a pillow, without an extra blanket, without a snuggly, wiggly bear. It's on us, I think. I mean, this was obviously not a survey of former NICU families. This is the kind of, could be anybody.
But I think for the families that we touch, like if we don't model it, we can't expect the families to do it at home. So it was a good reminder for me.
Ben (32:05.348)
Yeah, I think to me, I take the data a little bit differently and look at it from the perspective of the babies that are six months or less and six months and above. I think that for babies that are less than six months, I definitely don't feel great about even 12 % because we know these babies are at high risk. And we know these babies have probably, like you said, not reached the milestone where they can get out of a pillow and they'll just suffocate in their bed, which is terrifying. There's also the co-sleeping, which I think is something that happens quite
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (32:12.949)
Agreed. Yeah.
Ben (32:34.946)
a lot. I think to me, it's a reminder that we don't need to have conversations with the families in a unidirectional manner when they come to outpatient follow-up and say, here's what you should be doing, but inquire more about like, hey, how are you putting a baby to sleep? And try to basically work with families. Because for example, I had patients where they just said, hey, I'm just going to keep the baby in the bed with me. And then you say, okay, then if you're not going to follow, then let's try to
work out a way where your baby is not going to be in an unsafe position. And so we would try to work on stuff where the baby would be next to the wall and next to mom and not next to the father and not underneath a blanket. And we would try to address these. Because if you just say, hey, your baby needs to be in a crib on their back, and then if they go home and they say, well, I'm not going to do that, then that's a problem.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (33:18.649)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (33:28.74)
I also, so I'm not, and I'm not so surprised about the numbers at nine and 12 months. mean, I have an 11 month old and she will find a way to almost like jump out of her bed at this point. So I think it all depends on the babies, but like Daphna said, I think it's on us to try to do as much modeling as we can. And parents tend to forget that when we put babies on their side or on their belly and the neck, you they're on continuous monitoring, which changes the game dramatically. And that's not something that can be done at home.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (33:55.767)
Yeah, and one thing we also, think, don't do a good job of anywhere is say, actually, what are the things we know that are protective against SIDS, right? We're always telling parents what not to do, but things like pacifier use are actually protective. A temperature is protective, things like that. Making sure that if you're going to be feeding the baby late at night or...
close sleeping, that you're not smoking and that you're not doing drugs or drinking. I mean, we have to educate families, I think, about some of those protective things.
Ben (34:32.941)
There's these cribs now that are so nice where basically, especially as I was finishing residency, that's something that we talked a lot about where these cribs can sort of open up on one side and you can sort of tuck them next to the bed so that technically the baby is adjacent to the mother, but also in their own bed. And those are, in my opinion, very, very, very helpful. I know I bought one of those when my daughter was born and it's been great because she could basically be adjacent to the bed next to my wife and she was still in her crib.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (34:35.5)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (34:40.6)
Yeah.
Yeah, they're great.
Ben (35:00.014)
flat with no pillows and nothing. It was really, really helpful. And you could extend your arm and touch your baby. it makes a whole different.
Eli (35:07.839)
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I love so much of what, what you guys said. I, what I hear us saying collectively is, you know, these discussions around SIDS that I don't think we can view them as a prescription so much as a, as a dialogue and an effort in harm reduction, right? Knowing that there are cultural differences in terms of how people sleep. is not culturally competent to, to believe that every family is going to sleep.
Ben (35:21.838)
Yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (35:22.329)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Eli (35:36.673)
independent of their child with the child in a crib. And I think we need to be considerate that. In fact, if you look at that study, you see that the rates of non-supine sleep are three times higher in black and Hispanic individuals than white individuals and four times higher in low-income individuals than high-income individuals in the four-month age group. And that to me says two greater than or equal to two things. One, that
Those families have different perhaps cultural preferences that we are not listening to. And the second they get home, they say, well, I was glad that we had that conversation with the doctor, but they don't really understand how we do things. And that I take to be a failure on our part. Two, that what we know about correlation between race and ethnicity.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (36:18.553)
Mm-hmm.
Eli (36:29.117)
and income status and employment status and all these other factors of life would indicate that there are additional pressures on these families that make adhering to these very strict non-negotiable precautions in some of these SIDS discussions.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (36:36.099)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (36:41.358)
Yeah.
Eli (36:43.189)
exceedingly difficult. so again, that's a, that's a failure on our part to say what is reasonable for you in the course of your life. And let's talk about your setup and you know, some families don't even have a crib at home, right? They have a drawer that they pull out and that can be safe. There's a version of that that can be very safe, but only if we know about it, only if we talk about it.
Ben (37:01.604)
Absolutely. That is such a good point. look, who else is sleeping in the room? they say, hey, we can't wake up the other person. So I have to have the baby next to me. Like all these things are very relevant.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (37:02.275)
Yeah, you're right.
Eli (37:13.249)
Totally. Okay. Let's keep moving. All right. Uh, uh, next article. This one, uh, is a little bit less about, uh, neonatology specifically, but I think it'll be super interesting to our community, given how engaged, uh, in research, the neonatology community is. Uh, I guess the question for, uh, you guys, Ben and Daphna is have you ever reviewed a grant? Either one that you're writing, that you're a coauthor on or that you're asked to review and thought, uh,
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (37:36.601)
You
Eli (37:42.785)
Really? And you're frustrated because the grant has all these cringe words, groundbreaking, innovative, revolutionary, unprecedented. Well, I have news for the two of you, which is you need to take your pearl clutching cynicism and go for a hike. Because according to this recent JAMA Network open study, grant proposals with so-called promotional words, of which the authors identify 139, were about 50 % more likely to receive funding.
So I'm curious as you read this, what you thought.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (38:16.761)
I mean, it's all human psychology, right? I'm not surprised by this. I'm not surprised by some of the other data that I think you will share with us in a second. And I mean, I guess it depends on the intervention if it's groundbreaking or innovative, but I think it's perfectly appropriate to highlight what you think is special about your work. And that may be just what draws people's attention to what's unique about it.
Can you share some more words with us so people know what to be using in their grant proposals?
Ben (38:48.544)
No, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. I
Eli (38:50.521)
my God, Daphna, I am so glad you asked. Boy, do I have words for you. Ben is blushing, he is crying, there's all the waterworks, everything. Okay, compelling, imperative, foundational, robust, actionable, expansive, intriguing, elusive. Ben, I feel like if I keep naming these words, you're going to explode.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (38:55.481)
you
Ben (39:12.828)
It hurts every single time. feels, first of all, would, word of caution for everybody, Chad GPT loves to use these words. And sometimes you read something and you're like, is it really groundbreaking? It's not. It may be compelling or it may be interesting, it may be relevant, but is it groundbreaking, this earth shattering? No. So I would say that...
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (39:19.885)
Yeah, that's true.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (39:35.769)
Well, I think if you're going to use the word, it better be true. I think you should use words that are true. Some of these words are probably true.
Ben (39:43.062)
I've reviewed many different things, grants. I've reviewed articles. And I must say that whenever these are a little bit out of proportion, it tends to be a big turn off for me as a reviewer, just because you're like, well, if you can't really grasp the fact that this is an interesting perspective, but not a groundbreaking one, what else does that tell me about you?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (39:52.375)
That's Agreed.
Ben (40:06.436)
I don't particularly like it. know that in Europe, when we train, there's a big emphasis on moderation. So which was something that I had to unlearn when I came to the US where at the end of everything you write, you're supposed to moderate your words and say, well, even though I believe in X, think the up the there's could be merits to Y. And so you always have to moderate everything at the end to remain open and leave the possibilities for other opinions. And in the US, I was told no.
you conclude and you just slam this door shut and you tell this is how it is. This is you. You make your conclusion. You have you affirm your conclusion. So I think there's merit to both approaches, but I think that we should choose our words carefully. the other aspects of this of this study about the difference in gender.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (40:54.041)
I think there were some confounders in this study that they didn't. Yeah.
Ben (40:57.877)
The gender stuff was very interesting.
Eli (41:02.145)
Yeah, yeah, can talk about it. was going to say, oui oui in France, we must be very, it's strange, you know, it's very important compared to yours. But okay, I agree with you guys that maybe the most interesting part of this study is they found that female, self-identifying female authors were significantly less likely to use these words than were self-identifying male authors. so that, that,
Ben (41:05.988)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (41:07.341)
You
Eli (41:27.753)
you know, the authors actually make a really interesting, the authors of the study make a really interesting comment, which is they say that this is coming from a place of ingrained bias and ingrained structural bias against women in scientific academic institutions. They say, quote, the effects of sexist, sorry, the effects of sexist,
hostility accumulate over time and may make more senior women particularly unlikely to engage in such behavior, having learned from past experiences about how it may be received. They wrote, quote, a Japanese proverb states, the nail that stands out gets pounded down. And this was pretty striking to me. Any thoughts on this?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (42:15.929)
Yeah, what I think I would have liked to see, and I went to the original article and I would have liked to have seen the numbers of grants accepted by sex and promotional language, and they didn't show us that. And the truth is, is that the NIH funds way more men than it does females. I think it says here from 2012 to 2022, men received 67 % of all NIH grants.
So I wonder if there's a confounder there that we didn't see because they didn't show us what happened to women in grants who use promotional language. Did that make a difference? So I think that is interesting, would have been interesting to know.
Ben (43:03.428)
Yeah, I mean, this is so frustrating to me because it's so, I mean, I think it's a credit to women that they don't boast as much in the verbiage that they use. And somehow this somehow gets them penalized. There's this great TED talk, I forget from, I think it was from Ted Women by Sheryl Sandberg, where she basically talks about that as well, where she says, only women will be asked, like, how do you do it all? And it's like, men never get asked that question, right? It's like,
If a man shows a lot of authority, they're like, what a great charismatic leader. But if a woman does the exact same thing, like, she's such a bossy bitch, right? So there's inherent bias that needs to change. And I think that, in my opinion, having more women in the position to be in reviewing and assessing the merit of these grants and so on is probably what's going to turn the tide.
So yeah, it's not, yeah, I thought that was, that was an interesting, it's interesting for sure. I don't have a lot of thoughts. I don't know how to fix this. and I like, I was happy to see that women are actually not falling prey to this, like, my groundbreaking research. To me, I'm just going to say this out loud. If you are writing a paper and your claim to fame for the paper is that you're the first of doing this, like, Hey, we're the first study to do this. It's like, then that doesn't, that doesn't resonate at all. It's like, it's, it's those types of things.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (44:15.65)
Ha ha!
Ben (44:33.422)
that we could do better. It's not an argument. Like it's not because you're the first that it has that it means it's good. You have to show me why you, why something is valuable and compelling. Yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (44:33.719)
okay to be the first? What do mean?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (44:41.561)
Okay, it has to be compelling and you can be the first. That would be optimal.
Eli (44:48.683)
That's it. Well, if you're an author looking for promotional words or a reviewer wanting to know what the professional words are, we can point you towards the list of 139 that they list. But anyway, let's move on. We're entering our third segment now. This segment is called You May Have Heard. So we're just going to do a few quick hits on things that we've seen around the news. The first.
Ben (45:02.468)
Mm-hmm.
Eli (45:16.097)
piece that I want to highlight is that the AP put out in AP News a statement about sort of best practices in managing breastfeeding problems with a particular eye on tongue ties on ankyloglossia. Daphna, I think you chose this one. What stood out to you about this piece?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (45:38.745)
Well, I think we should just know, be aware of the conversation, especially anytime the AAP puts out a document, any quote unquote recommendations, I think it's something we should be aware of. I personally in N of one trials, as they're called, have seen a lot of success from the phrenectomy procedure. So I'm on the fence about it, but this is an evidence-based, we try to be evidence-based here and the evidence has not borne out on a population.
perspective. So I think it's just important for people to know either in what's the word, recommending phrenectomy or arguing against phrenectomy. think having the AAP information and the data, I think is useful. And if that is a discussion for family, having, you know, all the information to enter that type of discussion.
Eli (46:36.201)
Yeah. And, managing, ankyloglossia just with like, we manage any other condition, right? That they're, you know, one of things I really like about this guideline is there's an algorithm in here, which basically says you should, you should think about other things before you witness what appears to be a tongue tie and immediately recommend for anatomy. says, you know, you should do a pre and post weight. should evaluate concomitant causes like sleepiness at the breast, like macro.
Ben (46:45.998)
Yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (46:46.563)
Yeah.
Eli (47:01.025)
Micrognathia, I'm sorry, you should engage lactation. There certainly are a variety of steps that we can do to try to reduce symptomatology of an anatomical difference before we leap to a surgical intervention.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (47:17.313)
Yeah, and I think the point is well taken that not all ankyloglossia is a problem, right? So many babies have ankyloglossia and it's not interfering with feeding. And so I think that's super important. We shouldn't provide interventions to babies that we don't think are the cause of their problem or cause at all. Maybe parents are afraid about speech development and...
If it's not causing feeding problems, it's unlikely to cause speech problems, things like that. I think we need to be having those conversations with families for sure.
Ben (47:51.876)
Yeah, I agree with everything you both said. The paper is actually quite interesting. And you see the rates of a lingual frenotomy by year. Granted, it sort of mirrors the number of diagnosis of ankyloglossia, but you can tell that there's definitely a spike after 2005. And obviously, the question has to be asked, are people over diagnosing this as a clinically significant problem in order to be able to perform a procedure? I think that's something that should not be overlooked.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (47:58.168)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (48:20.313)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (48:20.516)
So having that algorithm that is, like you guys said, pretty straightforward and easy to go through is very helpful. So yeah, I agree.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (48:28.109)
Yeah. And of note, I mean, there's a lot of obviously distrust of physicians in particular. Pediatricians are getting a lot of flack for interventions, even that are evidence based, like vaccinations and are we getting kickbacks, which is, you know, so I think that patients are very concerned about interventions that they have to pay for, which, you know, I think that's not unreasonable.
Ben (48:54.755)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Eli (48:56.223)
Yeah, totally. And I mean, you got to see these graphs. are like upward and to the right hockey stick, the whole, the whole thing. Pretty impressive, pretty impressive graphs, no matter what you think about the diagnosis.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (49:00.057)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (49:07.268)
It's what you'd like your stock to do if you are investing.
Eli (49:10.921)
Yeah. my God. Yes. This is, this is the ideal portfolio strategy. all right, moving on. next article Daphna is also one of yours, a really nice review of mental health in the NICU. Such an important topic under discussed. can you share a little bit about, you know, what, what went into writing this article? What some of the main takeaways.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (49:21.127)
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (49:32.759)
Yeah, I mean, my main takeaway is that the Journal of Perinatology has put in a handful of perspective articles on parent mental health. I think it is a responsibility of neonatal health professionals to be aware of these things. So this article, I mean, I'll say it's my favorite, but it's just one of a cohort of articles that talk about different components.
bonding in the NICU, grieving in the NICU, discharge, the prenatal console. So I think people will get a lot of value out of them. People have worked through the AAP and TCAN for months, a year, two years almost, on creating webinars about these problems that came out all of last year and then putting pen to paper, not just to describe the situation at hand.
but also really to lay out some, what to do about it and some advocacy initiatives. I think the ones I really want to highlight here is that, I mean, this was really the overview paper. Mental health is a problem for parents in the NICU. It impacts babies both in the NICU and with their long-term outcomes. We have a responsibility to screen for this and to get.
parents access to mental health services. And I really want to highlight for the psychologists that work in NICUS, I mean, they have really been doing the work for some time. They had already made recommendations almost a decade ago for how we should incorporate mental health professionals, specifically licensed psychologists into NICUS.
And I think that's something we can advocate for on the individual level in our individual units. And so they've made some recommendations about that based on NICU size and then how to use different types of mental health professionals. So that's what I wanted to say. I hope everybody will take a look at not just this article, but the whole group of articles.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (51:52.289)
relating to parental mental health.
Eli (51:55.177)
Yeah, totally. And also, I really appreciated there's some language in there about how NICUs is with less resources who can't necessarily hire a psychologist or a therapist or, you know, have limited access to social work resources, day in, day out things that you can do to try to screen for and support, you know, family mental health and so some really nice recommendations in there. Next article, I thought this was really interesting. I am still trying to
learn about the whole history of the ups and downs of, you know, use of betamethasone in all sorts of patient populations of the NICU. But pediatricians just came out with this really interesting 50-year registry of outcomes related to now people in their 40s and 50s who received betamethasone as a premature infant and various health outcomes.
and found that cardiovascular events are 66 % less likely in this group. At the same time, hypertension is 74 % more likely. No changes in diabetes, pre-diabetes, or dyslipidemia in those who received beta as a premature infant and those who did not. Still lots to learn, lots to begin to understand the pharmacology of beta methadone and the long-term consequences.
Any takeaways from this one guys?
Ben (53:26.532)
I'm just going to say that we tend to forget that prenatal steroids can have an effect on blood pressure in our neonates. mean, think if you go in your whatever resources, you'll find that a baby that's preterm that's presenting with hypertension, one of the risk factors is having been exposed to betamethasone prenatally. I think this paper is very interesting in showing how these patients that are now close to 50 years old are more likely to have hypertension.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (53:52.3)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (53:56.406)
And I think that for us, what it means is that today we are so much better at treating respiratory distress syndrome. And I think we just have to be a little bit more judicious about our use of antenatal steroids. And so I think if a mother presents at 34 and five days, have a conversation about the risks and benefits of steroids with the family, because we're no longer in where a baby might die of RDS at 34 weeks.
So it's a conversation to be had with families. And so that's what I'm taking away. And it's definitely an interesting read from the data that they are providing.
Eli (54:33.439)
Yeah. Yeah. Such a good point. So many other facets of care that have changed in all those years that we can't necessarily attribute all of this to beta methadone alone. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben (54:41.348)
Why are you shaking your head, Daphna?
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (54:43.161)
I'm saying I agree. I don't have anything to add.
Ben (54:45.527)
OK. OK.
Eli (54:48.129)
Totally. All right, let's move on. One last article here on checklists. I love checklists. Checklists are my favorite. I remember reading Checklist Manifesto when I was in high school, just a budding. Go wannabe loved, a total go on day loved all of the, all of all of that stuff. And I've adored these and time and time again, I am just amazed by how effective these things can be. The journal, Perinatology.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (54:54.595)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (55:05.676)
I go wannabe, I like that.
Eli (55:16.989)
published a really nice study by Alyssa Thomas and colleagues who used a checklist, a pre-delivery checklist for infants with cardiac anomalies. And checklists had a variety of elements, team roles, description of
Is this infant expected to be unstable in the delivery room and why and how, which I thought were really nice questions, especially as a learner, you know, it's one thing to know that they will be. It's another thing to understand why is this infant expected to have decreased oxygenation, perfusion, both reviewing meds, pressurization, fluids, prostaglandins. just a lot, a lot here. And the sort of outcome of the study showed improve understanding in terms of
the perinatal course and in terms of our management as well as how things might go. Guys, any takeaways from this study?
Ben (56:11.65)
No, I felt vindicated because in our unit, this is pretty much something that we've implemented where one of our team members actually attends cath conference. So one member is actually involved in the discussions of patients who are prenatally navigated. Then this person is reporting to our division meeting where we can talk about our expected cardiac deliveries. And we iron out basically a pretty clear plan about what is expected for these babies in the way that this checklist and this huddle is established.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (56:13.945)
You
Ben (56:39.202)
And I must say that it changes everything. When you walk into a cardiac delivery and you know exactly what are the steps you're going to have to follow. And like you said, finding out what you need to do. So for example, UA, UVC, do we need both? Do we need double lumens for both? Do we need single lumens? That's very helpful. And also contingency plan of saying, well, if the baby needs a cardiac intervention, if we can get a UAC, that's fine. If we cannot get a UVC, that's...
fine as well, that can be done later. I think all these things help tremendously and make us much more efficient in our approach. I think that cardiac babies can always be challenging and especially if they're born premature. having a form of checklist or a form of conversation as a team before going to a cardiac delivery is a must. And I see the results of this study resonating with our practice because this has definitely made a difference for us.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (57:31.789)
Yeah, I mean, I'm not surprised. mean, checklists have always helped improve communication and make sure everybody's on the same page. You know, I think different members of the team say, I know what I need to do. I'm going to do this. And the doctors are saying, I'm doing this. And the RTs are saying, I'm doing this. But we don't always know what the other people are doing or they're not doing what we think they should be doing. So I think this really helps. I don't think the data, I think they could easily be extrapolated to neonates outside of.
Ben (58:00.61)
Yeah. And I must say, and I must say that this checklist may feel a bit long. So you may think like, there's no time to do this before delivery, but you could do this like three days before. Like, you know about these patients, like rarely do you show up at a cardiac delivery and it's a complete surprise. Sometimes these patients are prenatally diagnosed. They're navigated. You've done an inpatient or an outpatient consult. So this could be done two days before. know we do ours like sometimes weeks in advance. And unless the plan changes, we have an up to date,
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (58:00.675)
congenital heart disease.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (58:08.821)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (58:24.121)
Nothing. Nothing.
document.
Ben (58:30.18)
plan of care. it's a good document. And it's another one where the authors share the checklist and you can literally print it and start copying it straight. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (58:35.993)
Mm-hmm.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (58:40.333)
Yeah, and then the other thing I love is anybody can make the checklist, right? Anybody can be in charge of the checklist. And I think that's a great way for any team member to get involved. A nurse, a resident, fellow, a medical student. I mean, anybody could bring this up to the team as a QI initiative. So I think that's really cool.
Eli (59:01.313)
Absolutely. Well, guys, think that's kind of what we had on our docket here. Any final thoughts? Anything that you guys are looking forward to looking out for upcoming?
Ben (59:11.428)
I'm looking forward to episode number three. This is always a lot of fun. I think this is very, very valuable. I think we always are asking from our papers when we do journal club, is there a clinical relevance to what we're reading? Can we apply it at the bedside? Everything we've talked about, you're taking things to the bedside in how you're approaching patient care. So this is a lot of fun.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (59:14.283)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (59:30.327)
Yeah, totally agree. Thanks Eli.
Eli (59:33.205)
Thank you so much, guys. And as always to our listeners, if you have recommendations for how we could do this differently, better, let us know. If you have articles, things you're reading, things you want us to cover, let us know. Thank you so much for joining us. For Neo News, see you next time. Bye, guys.
Ben (59:49.22)
Thank you guys. See you next time. Bye.
Daphna Yasova Barbeau (59:51.725)
Bye everyone.
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