[Video recording of newborn resuscitation in the delivery room: technique and advantages]

Abstract

An extreme attentiveness is mandatory when caring about extremely-low-gestational-age neonates at birth because of their innate vulnerability. The interventions performed during resuscitation of these infants may have direct influence on the immediate survival and also on long-term morbidity. Although stressfull, each resuscitation step is crucial and needs to be precise, fast and harmless. In order to determine our compliance to the international guidelines and to assess our neonatal performances in delivery room, we used a Mobotix camera to record all resuscitations of extremely-low-gestational-age neonates during the decisive first minutes of life. Neonatal medical and nursing staff agreed to be recorded. Our local ethics committee approved that videotaping neonatal resuscitation is an audit of clinical practice and thus does not require informed consent. During debriefing sessions, we reviewed the videotaped recordings, which allowed us to identify frequent deviations from the international guidelines and to re-educate and improve performance. The most frequent errors we recognized were errors of hygiene, not re-evaluating oxygen titration and airway obstruction during mask ventilation. We observed team behaviour and coordination during resuscitation and focused on quality of care. We believe that this method may be very effective as a teaching tool.