Virtual Neonatal Resuscitation Curriculum for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to Improve Out-of-Hospital Newborn Care

OBJECTIVES: Out-of-hospital births are associated with a 2- to 11-fold increased risk of death compared to in-hospital births and are growing. Emergency Medical Services (EMS) clinicians have limited exposure to hospital birth emergencies, and there is no standardized prehospital neonatal resuscitation curriculum. Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) guidelines are the standard of care for infants born in the United States but focuses on in-hospital births and is not easily applied to EMS. There is a need for tailored NRP training to meet EMS clinicians' specific needs, context, and systems. METHODS: Edition NRP Textbook and NRP test questions. RESULTS: = 84) thought that this EMS-tailored NRP curriculum was easy to complete (100%), valuable to their clinical practice (99%), and filled a gap in their education (98%). They felt that implementing/requiring this training is possible/doable (99%) and recommend the curriculum to other EMS agencies (99%). CONCLUSIONS: A virtual EMS-tailored, NRP-based educational curriculum improved neonatal resuscitation knowledge immediately and was sustained at 3 months compared to baseline. The curriculum is feasible and acceptable to EMS clinicians.