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: This was a prospective observational study of a virtual EMS-tailored, newborn resuscitation curriculum focused on initial steps of newborn resuscitation in the out-of-hospital setting. The initial content (90-minute) was pilot tested virtually among 350 urban EMS clinicians, with favorable feedback (89% survey response rate). Based on feedback, we created a 60-minute interactive, virtual curriculum that includes NRP-based didactic and memory aids to reinforce how NRP differs from pediatric resuscitation designed specifically for EMS. The course also includes video demonstrations with pauses for hands-on self-directed skills practice. We delivered the curriculum to clinicians from 17 EMS agencies in rural Oregon. To assess neonatal resuscitation knowledge acquisition and retention, participants completed the same 10-question test before, after, and 3 months following the training. Questions were adapted from the 8^th Edition NRP Textbook and NRP test questions. Results: Eighty-four EMS clinicians completed the pretest, curriculum, and post-test and demonstrated improvement in immediate post-curriculum NRP knowledge (pretest mean score 5.32 ± 1.99; post-test mean score 8.61 ± 1.26; p < 0.001). Forty participants completed the 3-month follow up test and scores remained improved from baseline (3 month-follow up mean score 6.88 ± 1.83, p < 0.001). Prehospital clinicians (N = 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.