The Incubator
The Incubator
Ben Courchia & Daphna Yasova Barbeau
A weekly discussion about new evidence in neonatal care and the fascinating individuals who make this progress possible. Hosted by Dr. Ben Courchia and Dr. Daphna Yasova Barbeau.
#476 - Does NIPPV Work or Is It Just Higher Mean Airway Pressure?
Send us Fan Mail Dr. Brett Manley joins Ben for the opening episode of The Incubator’s special series on non-invasive ventilation, recorded ahead of Hot Topics in Neonatology. They work through the full arc of non-invasive support, from the delivery room to the convalescent phase and beyond. What actually counts as nasal high flow, and when should it come off? Why did HIPSTER and HUNTER move clinicians back toward CPAP as primary support? Is the benefit of NIPPV about synchronization or simpl...
Nov 2
50 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] -  What Does a CPR Coach Actually Do During a NICU Code?
Send us Fan Mail During a code, who is making sure the chest compressions are actually high quality? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Gina Klein, a simulation education consultant, and Sherry Casey, a NICU nurse and simulation coordinator, both from Cincinnati Children’s, to discuss their poster on implementing the CPR coach. Gina explains how video review in the emergency department revealed the microbehaviors that make feedback effective, like giving one piece of ...
Nov 2
14 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] -  How Can the CHNC Mentored Fellows Program Launch a Research Career?
Send us Fan Mail If a preterm infant’s PDA needs closing, does timing matter? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with the CHNC’s mentored fellows, Dr. Miriam Avadis of Phoenix Children’s and Dr. Shannon Batone of Arkansas Children’s, to hear their projects ahead of their presentations. Dr. Batone shares a mixed methods study of about 1,300 neonates receiving renal replacement therapy since 2011, where mortality rose over time despite growing use, and interviews with 21 pro...
Nov 1
21 min
#475 - 🟠 [CHNC 2026] - What’s New in the Latest Neonatal Resuscitation Guidelines?
Send us Fan Mail When a baby with congenital heart disease decompensates in the delivery room, do we still follow NRP? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Noorjahan Ali of Children’s Health Dallas, Dr. Henry Lee of UC San Diego and Rady Children’s, and Dr. Anne Ades of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Ali explains a green, yellow, and red light approach to resuscitating heart babies, and why common things are still common. Dr. Lee reviews recent NRP upd...
Nov 1
34 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - Are We All Reinventing the Same Wheel in NICU Staffing?
Send us Fan Mail What happens when most level IV NICUs are missing four to five advanced practice providers? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Sarah Shedler of Children’s Wisconsin and Chandler Williams, from Children's National, both members of the CHNC’s new APP Focus Group. They explain why APPs, caught between nursing and physician initiatives, needed a group of their own, and share results from their survey of member institutions: roles that vary widely from uni...
Oct 30
11 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - Should Every NICU Intubation Start With Video Laryngoscopy?
Send us Fan Mail Why does first-attempt intubation success in the NICU still hover around 40 to 56%? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Somi Singh, a second-year neonatology fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, to discuss her poster on standardizing neonatal intubation practices. Dr. Singh walks through her team’s QI project: a checklist with a time-out and video laryngoscopy, a standardized premedication order set, and a pocket-card workflow built aroun...
Oct 30
15 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - How AI should support clinicians, rather than replace Them.
Send us Fan Mail When a nurse makes an error with 20 things happening at once, is it really a personal slip, or a system that pushed her past capacity? Recording from the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. James Wan, director of the Human Factors and Systems Design team at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an engineer and pastor who keynoted on “Human Factors Empathy Science.” He explains the limited capacity model, why most clinicians live with almost no spare capacity, and why...
Oct 30
26 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - Why burnout is a Systems Problem and not a personal failure.
Send us Fan Mail Why does one difficult case sometimes feel heavier than it should? Recording at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Jennifer Kett, division head for bioethics and palliative care at Seattle Children’s, ahead of her keynote on secondary trauma in the NICU. Dr. Kett unpacks the overlapping concepts of primary and secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, moral distress, the moral residue crescendo, and institutional betrayal, using the metaphor of a pitc...
Oct 30
31 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - How Can Art shape Parental understanding of a fetal diagnosis?
Send us Fan Mail How often have you searched for a parent handout on a fetal diagnosis and found nothing, or something too cold and branded to share? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Namrita Odackal of The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a neonatologist, fellowship program director, and medical illustrator, to celebrate the launch of the Atlas of Fetal Pathologies at fetalatlas.org. She explains how fellows and faculty mentors write eac...
Oct 30
20 min
#475 - đźź  [CHNC 2026] - Can Fetal Surgery Prevent Complex Gastroschisis? and how botox is helping in fetal surgery for gastrocshisis.
Send us Fan Mail What if the baby with complex gastroschisis never needed months in the NICU? Recording live at the CHNC Symposium, Daphna sits down with Dr. Sundeep Keswani, associate surgeon-in-chief at Texas Children’s Hospital, after his keynote on fetoscopic in utero repair of gastroschisis. He explains how fetoscopy has made the risk-benefit balance possible, how intra-abdominal bowel dilation identifies babies at risk, and why a fetal Botox injection to relax the abdominal wall changed...
Oct 30
22 min
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