The Incubator

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Dr. Elizabeth Crouch, neonatologist, neuroscientist, and physician scientist at UCSF and co-host of At the Bench on The Incubator Podcast, joins Ben and Daphna live at Cool Topics to discuss palliative and comfort care in the NICU. Drawing from her research on organ donation, autopsy, and research donation after neonatal loss, Dr. Crouch shares how meaning making supports families through grief, offers practical tips for approaching these conversations with compassion and good timing, and reflects on the role of chaplains, ethics consultants, and care pathways in supporting a death with dignity.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Dr. Shmuel Zangen, Director of Neonatology at Barzilay Medical Center in Ashkelon, Israel, and former chair of the Israeli Neonatal Association, joins the podcast during his California sabbatical embedded with CPQCC. Having already led national QI collaborations targeting nosocomial infections and intraventricular hemorrhage across all 26 Israeli NICUs, he shares what he is learning about the culture, infrastructure, and methodology behind effective statewide quality improvement, and what he hopes to bring home as Israel transitions its neonatal database to the Ministry of Health.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Dr. Jochen Profit, Chair and Principal Investigator at CPQCC and Wendy J. Tomlin-Hess Endowed Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford Medicine, joins the podcast to discuss what truly separates high performing NICUs from the rest. He makes the case for process metrics over mortality as quality markers, highlighting normothermia on admission, breast milk feeding at discharge, and infection rates as deceptively simple yet deeply revealing indicators of unit culture. The conversation also explores how toxic work environments and provider burnout silently undermine quality improvement efforts.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Dr. Alexis Davis, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford and Medical Director of the NephroNICU at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, makes the case that neonatology is entering a nephro era. She discusses how AKI prevention through initiatives like the BABY NINJA collaborative, fluid management strategies, and the emerging concept of the NephroNICU are reshaping how we think about kidney health in premature infants. She also addresses the complex ethical and practical considerations around dialysis and renal replacement therapy in newborns with congenital kidney failure.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Ra’Niesha Bratton, MPH, CHES, CPQCC Family Advisory Council board member and public health advocate, and Joanne Tillman, CPQCC Family Engagement Coordinator, join the podcast to discuss what genuine family centered care looks like in practice. Drawing from lived NICU experience, Ra’Niesha shares how implicit bias and cultural incompetence harm families at their most vulnerable and how structured family advisory councils can drive systemic change. The conversation also tackles peer to peer support gaps, bereavement resources, and how to access the CPQCC NICU Family Advisory Council Toolkit.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Silvia Bor, NICU mom to a 24 weeker and Family Advisory Council member for the CPQCC, makes the case for why family centered care must go beyond a philosophy and become a structured practice. She shares how involving parents in quality improvement initiatives, including the NEOBrain early skin to skin project, drives meaningful change at the bedside. She also outlines the CPQCC toolkit for building hospital level Family Advisory Councils and discusses how to identify the right parent advocates, including those whose NICU journeys ended in loss.

Support the show

As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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Recorded live at the Cool Topics in Neonatology conference, this episode features Dr. Denise Suttner, Clinical Director of the Rady Children's Hospital NICU, professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego, and director of the San Diego Regional ECMO Program. Dr. Suttner discusses the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (CPQCC) as a model for statewide neonatal quality improvement, the importance of family centered communication in the NICU, and the value of state level professional organizations in advancing advocacy for neonatal healthcare funding and pediatric subspecialty reimbursement.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Jessica Shui, attending neonatologist at Mass General for Children, to explore the game-changing potential of Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) in the NICU. We dive into her recent paper in the Journal of Perinatology on using non-invasive EIT to identify optimal PEEP in infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Dr. Shui explains how this real-time, radiation-free technology allows clinicians to visualize lung mechanics, dynamically titrate ventilator settings, and confidently reduce PEEP without risking atelectasis. Join us as we discuss moving beyond blind adjustments and stepping into the future of personalized neonatal respiratory care.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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The PDA debate has a new data point. TREOCAPA, a phase 3 multicenter European RCT, tested prophylactic acetaminophen in infants born at 23 to 28 weeks. The ductus closed more reliably. Whether that translated into better survival without severe morbidity at 36 weeks is where the conversation gets interesting.

Also this week: a large multicenter cohort study puts real numbers on diazoxide use across US NICUs and the pulmonary hypertension risk that has driven so much practice variation. The NeoDry trial tests whether drying very preterm infants before plastic wrapping improves normothermia at admission, with results that are a good reminder of why we run trials. And a retrospective from NYU raises the question of whether standard caffeine dosing in the most premature infants is leaving something on the table.

The episode closes with Ben and Eli on Florida’s infant formula heavy metal report and why publishing findings without methods may be as much a public health problem as the data itself.

Support the show

As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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In this Neo News episode, Ben and Eli dive into the recent controversial announcement from the state of Florida regarding heavy metals and pesticides found in infant formulas. They discuss the implications of releasing testing data without transparent methodology or clinical context, especially for unregulated or recalled brands like ByHeart and Similac Soy Isomil. How should NICU clinicians counsel parents who want to bring their own formulas from home? Tune in as they unpack the regulatory loopholes, the evolving public health initiatives, and the ongoing challenge of navigating unverified reports in neonatal care!

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https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article314266407.html

Support the show

As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: [email protected]. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

Enjoy!