Evaluation of family and staff experiences with virtual rounding and bedside presence in a tertiary neonatal intensive care unit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic-related visitation restrictions started in March 2020 in Alberta, Canada. In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, we implemented a Virtual Communications initiative to allow parents to continue to be present with their infants, attend daily rounds, and communicate with the medical team. The purpose of this survey study was to describe our approach and evaluate the experience for families and staff.

Telemedicine-guided thoracentesis of tension pneumothorax in a term newborn.

We describe a case of a term female infant born in a rural community hospital and who developed a left-sided spontaneous tension pneumothorax shortly after birth. We used telemedicine to guide the family physician and healthcare team at the referring hospital to perform a life-saving thoracentesis using an intravenous cannula. The cannula was kept in place to drain the persistent pneumothorax during transportation to the pediatric intensive care unit at the tertiary hospital.