Couplet Care in the NICU with Dr. David Paul and Tamie Hotchkiss

08/24/23 • 15 min

Becoming a parent is both life-changing and challenging. One of the first challenges some new parents face is the need for their baby to receive life-saving care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). A small number of hospitals across the United States, including ChristianaCare, offer "couplet care" - having mother and baby cared for in the same NICU room - as a way to make a stressful situation a bit less stressful.
Dr. David Paul, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at ChristianaCare, and Tamie Hotchkiss, assistant nurse manager in the NICU, join us for this episode to explain how this revolutionary approach to care works and how it benefits both parents and babies.
We walk through the journey families have before and after couplet care, discuss how moms and babies qualify this specialized care, along with what care looks like when couplet care is not an option.
Learn where the concept of couplet care comes from and why it is such a rarity in American health care.
Dr. David Paul is one of the nation's leading neonatologists who's been recognized for his excellence in teaching, research and care. He was appointed Chair of Department of Pediatrics in June 2014. He has been a practicing neonatologist in the community since 1994 serving at ChristianaCare's Christiana Hospital and Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children as well as several other hospitals. A champion for the prevention of infant mortality, Dr. Paul has led the Delaware initiatives to decrease infant mortality and premature birth for over a decade.
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Previous Episode

The Other 80% of Health with Erin Booker and Chloe Baird

Medical professionals enter health care to create health. But here's a surprising fact - medical care only accounts for about 20% of a person's overall health outcomes
The other 80% are the result of many factors, most significantly Social Determinants/Drivers of Health. In this week's episode, we discover what SDOH are and what can be done to address them.
Join us for an enlightening conversation with ChristianaCare's chief bio-psycho-social officer, Erin Booker, and community health worker program coordinator, Chloe Baird. They explain what it takes for an organization to go from being a health system to a system that truly impacts health.
From in-person, one-on-one interactions to major, collaborative initiatives to emerging technologies, learn how knocking down social barriers to health allows for whole-person care and creates a critical layer of care in the community that improves care for the individual.
Erin Booker is ChristianaCare's chief bio-psycho-social officer. Booker is responsible for developing strategic community partnerships, creating and implementing a portfolio of innovative programs and evidence-based initiatives to advance the health of the community, and overseeing ChristianaCare community benefit activities. She joined ChristianaCare in 2015 and is a Licensed Professional Counselor, with a focus on trauma and recovery.
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Mental Health in Health Care and Psychological First Aid with Katie Godfrey, PhD

Working in health care is certainly rewarding, but it can also be challenging mentally and emotionally. That's what makes caring for the caregiver such an important part of how health care organizations support their staff.
In this episode we're joined by Katie Godfrey, a psychologist and director of ChristianaCare's Center for Worklife Wellbeing. We dive into the mental stressors health care professionals face and explore a program called Psychological First Aid (PFA), a powerful tool in cultivating empathy and compassion between colleagues.
Discover how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the conversation around the emotional well-being of health care workers, how public perception around that well-being is evolving and how organizations in health care and other industries are responding.
Katie Godfrey, PhD, is director of the Center for WorkLife Wellbeing at ChristianaCare. She leads a team of psychologists and researchers, who develop, deliver, and study programs and initiatives to promote and sustain the wellbeing of health care professionals. She previously managed Care for the Caregiver, which is one of the country's best utilized healthcare professional peer support programs with over 500 individual and group encounters per year.
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