Intraprofessional Excellence in Nursing: Collaborative Strategies for Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a growing public health concern, one that costs the health care system $190-$720 million each year. Recently, state-level perinatal quality collaborative groups have disseminated NAS action plans: customizable frameworks aimed to assist health care systems in identifying, evaluating, treating, and coordinating discharge services for neonates with NAS. Hospital-based neonatal nursing quality improvement teams, including neonatal nurse practitioners (NNPs), neonatal clinical nurse specialists (CNSs), and clinical neonatal nurses, by virtue of their collective academic, administrative, and practical years of experience, are ideally positioned to develop, implement, and evaluate NAS care bundles. The article's purpose is to discuss key elements of an NAS care bundle using the framework of the Perinatal Quality Collaborative of North Carolina NAS action plan as an exemplar. Discussion of evidence-based and nursing-driven metrics will be followed by a discussion of the emerging concept of an inpatient-to-outpatient transitional care NAS management model.