W&I to host NICU conference

PROVIDENCE – Women & Infants Hospital is hosting a day-long conference April 29 about its neonatal intensive-care unit and the medical model and science behind it, with experts from the hospital and across the country describing what they see as the future of NICUs.
Women & Infants opened its new NICU last September as part of the South Pavilion addition. It’s the nation’s largest single-family room NICU, and the subject of a study comparing the neurodevelopmental outcomes of babies treated there with those of previous NICU patients.
“The single-family room design, [which is] the future of NICU care, fosters an environment that is sensitive to the needs of the baby and promises to have a profound effect on the recovery, growth and long-term outcome of a tiny infant,” said Dr. James F. Padbury, pediatrician-in-chief at Women & Infants and a professor of pediatrics and perinatal biology at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.
Padbury, who oversees the NICU, will give a presentation at the conference, as will Barry M. Lester, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior and pediatrics at the Alpert Medical School and director of the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk at Women & Infants. Lester is leading the study of the NICU.
Also speaking will be experts from the Indiana University School of Medicine, McGill University, Dartmouth Medical School, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Yale University School of Medicine, and the March of Dimes.
In addition, exhibitors and poster presenters will share the latest in research, technological products and services available for the care of perinatal and neonatal patients.
The event is titled “Millennium Neonatology: Building for the Future” and runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Women & Infants Education Center, 101 Dudley St., in Providence. It is geared to a professional audience, and continuing-education credits are available for doctors and nurses.
Additional information is available at womenandinfants.org/millenniumsymposium.