Quality Improvement to Improve Feeding Practices in Neonatal Intensive Care Units and Special Newborn Care Units

Neonatal care is increasingly focused on translating evidence-based feeding recommendations into safe, consistent, and sustainable bedside practice. Feeding preterm and sick neonates involves complex decisions regarding protocol adherence, feeding advancement, human milk provision, transition to oral feeding, and monitoring of tolerance. However, substantial variation persists among neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and special newborn care units (SNCUs), particularly in resource-limited settings. Inconsistent staff training, documentation, communication, supervision, and monitoring may contribute to delayed or inappropriate care and preventable complications. Although clinical research has established important principles for neonatal nutrition, less is known about how these principles can be reliably implemented and sustained in routine practice. Quality improvement (QI) approaches, including Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, audit and feedback, checklists, education, and data-driven monitoring, may help close this evidence-to-practice gap, but their effectiveness, adaptability, and long-term sustainability require further investigation.This Research Topic aims to examine how QI and implementation strategies can improve the reliability, safety, and consistency of feeding-related care for preterm and sick neonates. It will consider how neonatal units design, evaluate, adapt, and sustain interventions that promote adherence to feeding protocols and reduce unwarranted practice variation. The Research Topic will address questions concerning which QI methods are most effective, how barriers and facilitators influence implementation, and how improvements can be maintained and scaled across different neonatal care settings.To gather further insights into implementation-focused approaches to feeding care in NICUs and SNCUs, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Design and implementation of QI initiatives to improve adherence to standardized feeding protocols• Process changes to increase exclusive breastfeeding and human milk feeding• Staff education, training, mentorship, and behavior-change interventions• Barriers and facilitators to sustained adherence to feeding and nutrition protocols• Audit-and-feedback systems, checklists, dashboards, and other approaches for monitoring compliance• QI approaches to feeding advancement, feeding tolerance assessment, and transition to oral feeding• Strategies to improve documentation, communication, and multidisciplinary decision-making• Family and caregiver engagement within feeding-related QI initiatives• Adaptation and sustainability of feeding interventions in resource-limited settings and SNCUs• Scale-up and transferability of successful QI interventions across neonatal unitsWe welcome Brief Research Report, Clinical Trial, Community Case Study, Methods, Original Research, Study Protocol, Systematic Review, Review, Mini Review, Perspective, Opinion, General Commentary, and Policy and Practice Reviews that provide practical, implementation-focused insights into improving feeding-related care processes for preterm and sick neonates. Topic editors: Shashi Kant Dhir, Elena Sinkiewicz-Darol Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/87561/quality-improvement-to-improve-feeding-practices-in-neonatal-intensive-care-units-and-special-newborn-care-units