Quality Assurance

Improving quality is the remit of the national NHS Newborn and Infant Physical Examination Programme (NIPE).   A quality assurance framework is being developed which will include key components such as scrutinising regular routine data, self assessment and peer reviews.  The new IT screening management system, specially designed to underpin the newborn and infant physical examinations, will provide a means for quality to be more readily monitored.  The NIPE Programme will be working closely with Regional Teams when it comes to implementing quality assurance at a local level.

To form the basis of risk analysis, process maps have been developed for the overall process of delivering the newborn and infant examinations as well as for the four specialist screening elements (eyes, heart, hips and testes).

Alongside the other antenatal and newborn programmes, the NIPE Programme is participating in a cross-programme quality assurance working party which is developing a single quality assurance template with generic themes and criteria for all screening programmes.  As part of this process, and with input from our SHA lead, we have identified a full set of NIPE success criteria that map to the generic objectives developed by the cross-programme QA group.