Essential Newborn Care (ENC) Now!

Why is this Program Important?

Essential Newborn Care (ENC) Now! is a digital package in which an assigned mentor provides initial or refresher training in Helping Babies Breathe when in-person gatherings are limited for a myriad of reasons. The goal is to save newborn lives, with a vision of both collaboration and accessible education to address the most current developments in basic newborn care.

This curriculum represents joint development by the WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics to address critical elements of both resuscitation and immediate newborn care at birth. As a result, you will note subtle differences in the content of these materials from Helping Babies Breathe (HBB), 2^nd Edition. ENC Now! is an enhancement of HBB with mentorship and digital dissemination of content.

Who Can Benefit?

Novice learners will connect to the learning platform through their smartphone and receive one-on-one instruction of the learning modules by expert facilitators via Zoom. Experienced learners can do self-paced learning of the modules. Remote facilitation will be enhanced by the presence of a local facilitator who will provide oversight for low-dose high-frequency (LDHF) practice, particularly for the critical life-saving skill of bag-mask ventilation. The local facilitator will also utilize the learning platform to conduct objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs), skills-based assessments of clinical knowledge and decision-making, to track progress over time. The learning platform allows the local facilitator to continue to receive mentorship and oversight from a remote facilitator to support their own development as a skilled facilitator.

Program Details

Using remote facilitation, remote/local mentoring and available digital tools, a blended learning experience that engages participants in fruitful group discussions and hands-on practice has been developed, and will enable objective assessment of participant knowledge and skills and sustains these skills in practice. This approach leverages the proven pedagogical approach of HBB and enhances it with new technology. The solution will allow for ongoing mentorship and supportive supervision of local facilitators, who are developing their own skills as facilitators of training and quality improvement activities. To adapt to current circumstances, the digital training will include additional course materials to address COVID related issues, such as infection prevention, use of personal protective equipment and care of patients with COVID.

How is the Program Implemented?

Based on the level of competence for the learners, they will experience the curriculum differently. Novice learners will connect to the curriculum via a combination of virtual and in-person learning, while more experienced learners may experience the program entirely via virtual modules if they choose to do so.

Delivering Value and Impact

The COVID pandemic has disrupted delivery of quality maternal and newborn health care. Experienced neonatal care providers are being reassigned to provide direct response care during the crisis, leaving auxiliary and less experienced staff to provide essential newborn care. In the context of COVID, convening groups of learners and educators together in a classroom setting for face-to-face instruction is impractical, if not impossible. As such, adapting proven clinical education resources to be presented remotely is a viable solution, essentially testing a new delivery system for the well proven methodology of HBB.

Program Partnerships

Laerdal Global Health
Global Health Media Project