Revision process for the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health in 2023

< Back to Lifecycle

The European Foundation for the Care of Newborn Infants (EFCNI) is happy to announce the upcoming revision of 76 standards of the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health (ESCNH). As part of the revision process, we invite healthcare professionals, parent representatives, industry partners, and all other stakeholders to take part in a public consultation and provide feedback on the ESCNH with the aim of further improving their quality.

More information regarding the updating process can be found at the end of this page.

The public consultation is now closed.

The following standards require an update in 2023

Please click on the topic names to access the respective standards.

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Infant- & family-centred developmental care” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Supportive sensory environment
  • Management of the acoustic environment
  • Very early and continuous skin-to-skin contact
  • Case management and transition to home
  • Clinical consultation and supervision for healthcare professionals on supporting families
  • Education and training for infant- and family-centred developmental care (IFCDC)
  • Family access
  • Family support services
  • Support for parental-infant bonding

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Care procedures” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Supporting the infant during hygiene procedures
  • Temperature management in newborn infants
  • Weighing
  • Mouth care
  • Nappy change
  • Positioning support and comfort
  • Protecting sleep
  • Inserting and managing feeding tubes
  • Skin care of hospitalised infants
  • Support during painful procedures and pain assessment

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Patient safety & hygiene practice” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Hand hygiene
  • Vascular access
  • Nurse staffing in neonatal intensive care
  • Patient safety and quality awareness in neonatal intensive care
  • Patient screening for resistant bacteria
  • Personal hygiene
  • Prevention of medication errors in NICU patients
  • Prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia
  • Safe equipment use
  • Monitoring errors
  • Central venous catheter infection prevention
  • Environmental hygiene in the NICU

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Follow-up & continuing care” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Assessment of visual function
  • Cognitive development
  • Communication, speech, and language
  • Coordination and integration of care after discharge home
  • Healthy lifestyle and cardiovascular risk factors
  • Hearing screening
  • Meeting special needs at school
  • Mental health
  • Motor and neurological follow-up assessment
  • Parent mental health
  • Peer and sibling relationships
  • Post-discharge responsive parenting programmes
  • Reproductive counselling

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “NICU design” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Core principles of NICU design to promote family-centred care
  • Facilitation of skin-to-skin care and parental involvement through the physical environment
  • General layout of the unit

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Medical care & clinical practice” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Management of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn infant (PPHN)
  • Neonatal jaundice
  • Neurological monitoring of the high-risk infant: EEG and aEEG
  • Neurological monitoring in the high-risk infant: ultrasound and MRI scanning
  • Neurological monitoring in the high-risk infant: clinical neurological evaluation
  • Postnatal management of newborn infants with hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE)

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Nutrition” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Family education and training on infant feeding in the unit and after discharge
  • Feeding of late preterm infants
  • Monitoring growth in the neonatal unit
  • The role of human milk banks
  • The role of nutrient supplements for preterm infants
  • The role of preterm formula
  • Written standards of nutritional practice

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Ethical decision-making & palliative care” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Communication in ethically complex decisions
  • Decisions of withholding or withdrawing life support
  • Palliative care
  • Rights of infants, parents, and families in difficult decisions

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Birth & transfer” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Collaboration with parents in ante- and perinatal care
  • Information provision for women about the risk for preterm birth (PTB)
  • Maternal transfer for specialist care
  • Neonatal transport
  • Organisation of perinatal care

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Data Collection & documentation” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Accessibility of information
  • Characteristics of health indicators

Access the public consultation survey of the standards of “Education & training” by clicking on the respective standard name:

  • Continuing professional development (CPD)
  • Education programme supporting parents and families
  • Evidence-based practice
  • Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional practice (IPP)
  • Neonatal resuscitation training

Overview: updating process

In line with contemporary literature (1–4), EFCNI sets up a public and an expert consultation for the respective standards to facilitate the revision process.

The public consultation gives professionals that already participated in the ESCNH as Topic Expert Group (TEG) members, parent organisations and further stakeholders such as professional/international organisations and industry partners the chance to provide feedback on the ESCNH in order to further improve quality. Additionally, EFCNI wants to ensure that the wider community has the opportunity to contribute and form the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health. The consultation period runs from the beginning of April 2023 until July 2023 and the consultation is accessible via an online survey (links are provided above).

For the expert consultation, independent specialists are invited to review one of the standards currently under revision to increase general acceptance and ensure the conclusiveness of evidence. EFCNI aimed at consulting one to two experts per standard. The expert consultation phase is conducted simultaneously to the public consultation and is accompanied by an online questionnaire, which is only accessible to invited experts.

If you are interested in becoming an independent expert reviewer for the current or future revisions of the European Standards of Care for Newborn Health, you can send us your name and your expertise to standards@efcni.org.

After both consultation phases have ended, all feedback willl be consolidated by the medical director and the project coordinator at EFCNI. For reasons of transparency, all comments of the public consultation are published on this website after the revised standards are final. Respondents can request that their contribution is not published, when stating ample justification. In accordance with our privacy policy, names are not displayed.

Following the consultation phase, the first authors of the original standards will receive the consolidated comments of both consultations. Thereafter they will review the comments and revise the standards in agreement with their co-authors. Once a revised draft of the standard is available, the respective TEG chairs are asked for proof of content. The corresponding Chair Committee voting, which requires an 80% majority for an update to be passed, will be held in 2024 for majorly revised standards, in accordance with the original developing process.

For further information on the revision process or the ESCNH you can contact us via email at standards@efcni.org.

  1. NICE. Health and Social Care Directorate Quality standards Process guide [Internet]. 2020 [cited 2021 Jun 7]. Available from: https://www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/Standards-and-indicators/Quality-standards/quality-standards-process-guide.docx
  2. Cowl J, Armstrong MJ, Schaefer C, Fielding J. How to conduct public and targeted consultation [Internet]. GIN; Available from: https://g-i-n.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Consultation-final-for-pdf-publication-1.pdf
  3. NHMRC. Guidelines for Guidelines: Independent review [Internet]. 2018. Available from: https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelinesforguidelines/review/independent-review
  4. NHMRC. Guidelines for Guidelines: Public consultation [Internet]. 2018. Available from: https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelinesforguidelines/review/public-consultation