Coached, Coordinated, Enhanced Neonatal Transition (CCENT)

Looking back:
our work in Phase 1

Since 2016, we have been supporting and empowering families as they and their baby transition from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to their homes. To do so, we’ve pioneered the role of the nurse navigator. CCENT nurse navigators support NICU families in three ways: 1) parental coaching and psychosocial support, 2) care coordination, and 3) education about caring for an infant with medical complexities.  

We reached our recruitment target of 275 participants and all participants have completed the study. We have already begun preparing our data for analysis. Our next steps will be to analyze our data, summarize our findings, draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the nurse navigator intervention, and disseminate our findings to knowledge users across the pediatric academic community.   

“Being part of the CCENT study was very meaningful to me. The interactions I had with families changed the way that I practiced nursing. It was a privilege to be so intimately involved in their journey. My hope is that families found the support of the Nurse Navigator important, and that this role can continue at SickKids in the future.” -
Kimberly Colapinto, Nurse Navigator

An eye to the future: what Phase 2 has in store for us

This data will inform the development of our Phase 2 project. In the next stage, we will study how to incorporate the effective components of the nurse navigator intervention across Canada. We will hold focus groups with study participant families, nurse navigators, NICU staff, neonatal follow-up teams, and implementation scientists to refine the project and prepare it for implementation in other institutions. 

Our preparations for Phase 2 are well underway. We’ve created guides for focus groups, come up with questions to ask interested parties in order to refine the Phase 2 study protocol, and discussed our goals with the core team of investigators and patient-partners. Patient-partner involvement will be crucial to the success of Phase 2; we will focus on the elements of the intervention that patient-partners tell us are useful and important to them.