Watford General Hospital is expanding its highly regarded in‑house newborn resuscitation training to include paramedics, enhancing lifesaving support for babies both in hospital and across the wider community.
For more than ten years, the hospital’s maternity and neonatal teams have delivered the Resuscitation Council UK Newborn Life Support course onsite, ensuring clinical staff maintain the most up‑to‑date skills in emergency newborn care.
Now, backed by NHS England funding, Watford General is formally opening the programme to paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service, strengthening the link between hospital and community response teams.
The NLS course brings together professionals from maternity services, neonatal units, and community and emergency care teams. This multidisciplinary approach allows participants to discuss real‑world clinical scenarios, share experience, and learn from each other’s expertise.
For paramedics, the training offers invaluable insight into how neonatal emergencies are managed in hospital settings. This helps to:
- Improve clinical decision‑making during community callouts
- Enhance response in cases where newborns require urgent intervention before reaching hospital
- Promote more consistent care across the emergency pathway
Dr Sankara Narayanan, Consultant Neonatologist at Watford General Hospital, commented:
“This partnership strengthens our commitment to high‑quality multidisciplinary training. We have been delivering this specialised course in‑house for many years, and extending it to paramedics is an important step in enhancing both community and hospital‑based newborn care. Our shared aim is to ensure every newborn receives timely, effective, lifesaving support.”
As newborn emergencies are rare, but time‑critical, ensuring frontline responders have specialist training is crucial. By giving paramedics access to the same evidence‑based NLS training as hospital staff, the collaboration supports:
- More reliable, high‑quality emergency care
- Closer alignment between hospital and ambulance teams
- Better outcomes for babies requiring resuscitation
The initiative represents a significant step forward in strengthening the region’s newborn emergency care system and improving continuity across the entire response pathway.
Image credit: iStock
