The Incubator

Latest Episodes:

#425 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Are We Missing Neonatal AKI Right in Front of Us? (ft. Dr. Caitlin Carter) Mar 19, 2026

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Dr. Caitlin Carter, Clinical Director of Nephrology at Rady Children’s Hospital and associate clinical professor at UC San Diego, joins the podcast to challenge how neonatologists recognize and follow up on acute kidney injury. She explains why creatinine alone is insufficient, how biomarkers like NGAL can detect tubular injury before function declines, and why AKI too often disappears from the discharge summary. She also outlines published consensus guidelines on post NICU nephrology follow-up, with clear thresholds based on gestational age and AKI severity.

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As always, feel free to send us questions, comments, or suggestions to our email: nicupodcast@gmail.com. You can also contact the show through Instagram or Twitter, @nicupodcast. Or contact Ben and Daphna directly via their Twitter profiles: @drnicu and @doctordaphnamd. The papers discussed in today's episode are listed and timestamped on the webpage linked below.

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#424 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - How Should We Feed the Most Immature Babies in Our NICUs? (ft. Dr. Tarah Colaizy) Mar 19, 2026

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Dr. Tarah Colaizy, Professor of Neonatology at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital and Medical Director of the Mother’s Milk Bank of Iowa, challenges the one size fits all approach to nutrition in periviable infants. She shares the Iowa philosophy of individualized, principle driven feeding management, explains why rigid protocol adherence can backfire in the most immature babies, and walks through her unit’s glycerin protocol for meconium obstruction of prematurity. She also discusses the practical realities of frequent low volume lab monitoring and the importance of patience over speed in enteral feeding advancement.

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#423 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Should Neonatology Break Free from Pediatrics? (ft. Dr. Satyan Lakshminrusimha) Mar 19, 2026

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Dr. Satyan Lakshminrusimha, Chair of Pediatrics and Pediatrician in Chief at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, makes a compelling case for rebranding and restructuring neonatology as a field. He argues for adopting the title of neonatal critical care physician, addresses the stark disparity between NICU revenue generation and neonatologist compensation, and outlines a step by step resuscitation framework for the field, from restoring professional identity to establishing a dedicated neonatal residency pathway and ultimately recognizing neonatology as its own independent department.

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#422 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - What Does Dignified End of Life Care Look Like in the NICU? (ft. Dr. Elizabeth Crouch) Mar 19, 2026

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Dr. Elizabeth Crouch, neonatologist, neuroscientist, and physician scientist at UCSF and co-host of At the Bench on The Incubator Podcast, joins Ben and Daphna live at Cool Topics to discuss palliative and comfort care in the NICU. Drawing from her research on organ donation, autopsy, and research donation after neonatal loss, Dr. Crouch shares how meaning making supports families through grief, offers practical tips for approaching these conversations with compassion and good timing, and reflects on the role of chaplains, ethics consultants, and care pathways in supporting a death with dignity.

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#421 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Can the CPQCC Model Be Exported to the World? (ft. Dr. Shmuel Zangen) Mar 18, 2026

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Dr. Shmuel Zangen, Director of Neonatology at Barzilay Medical Center in Ashkelon, Israel, and former chair of the Israeli Neonatal Association, joins the podcast during his California sabbatical embedded with CPQCC. Having already led national QI collaborations targeting nosocomial infections and intraventricular hemorrhage across all 26 Israeli NICUs, he shares what he is learning about the culture, infrastructure, and methodology behind effective statewide quality improvement, and what he hopes to bring home as Israel transitions its neonatal database to the Ministry of Health.

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#420 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - What Do Normothermia, Breast Milk, and Infection Rates Have in Common? (ft. Dr. Jochen Profit) Mar 18, 2026

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Dr. Jochen Profit, Chair and Principal Investigator at CPQCC and Wendy J. Tomlin-Hess Endowed Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford Medicine, joins the podcast to discuss what truly separates high performing NICUs from the rest. He makes the case for process metrics over mortality as quality markers, highlighting normothermia on admission, breast milk feeding at discharge, and infection rates as deceptively simple yet deeply revealing indicators of unit culture. The conversation also explores how toxic work environments and provider burnout silently undermine quality improvement efforts.

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#419 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Is the Neonatal Kidney the Organ We Have Been Ignoring? (ft. Dr. Alexis Davis) Mar 18, 2026

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Dr. Alexis Davis, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford and Medical Director of the NephroNICU at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, makes the case that neonatology is entering a nephro era. She discusses how AKI prevention through initiatives like the BABY NINJA collaborative, fluid management strategies, and the emerging concept of the NephroNICU are reshaping how we think about kidney health in premature infants. She also addresses the complex ethical and practical considerations around dialysis and renal replacement therapy in newborns with congenital kidney failure.

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#418 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Are We Truly Listening to NICU Families or Just Checking a Box? (ft. Ra’Niesha Bratton & Joanne Tillman) Mar 18, 2026

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Ra’Niesha Bratton, MPH, CHES, CPQCC Family Advisory Council board member and public health advocate, and Joanne Tillman, CPQCC Family Engagement Coordinator, join the podcast to discuss what genuine family centered care looks like in practice. Drawing from lived NICU experience, Ra’Niesha shares how implicit bias and cultural incompetence harm families at their most vulnerable and how structured family advisory councils can drive systemic change. The conversation also tackles peer to peer support gaps, bereavement resources, and how to access the CPQCC NICU Family Advisory Council Toolkit.

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#417 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Do NICU Families Have a Seat at the Table? (ft. Silvia Bor) Mar 18, 2026

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Silvia Bor, NICU mom to a 24 weeker and Family Advisory Council member for the CPQCC, makes the case for why family centered care must go beyond a philosophy and become a structured practice. She shares how involving parents in quality improvement initiatives, including the NEOBrain early skin to skin project, drives meaningful change at the bedside. She also outlines the CPQCC toolkit for building hospital level Family Advisory Councils and discusses how to identify the right parent advocates, including those whose NICU journeys ended in loss.

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#416 - 🏖️ [COOL TOPICS] - Can Statewide Collaboration Transform Neonatal Care? (ft. Dr. Denise Suttner) Mar 18, 2026

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Recorded live at the Cool Topics in Neonatology conference, this episode features Dr. Denise Suttner, Clinical Director of the Rady Children's Hospital NICU, professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego, and director of the San Diego Regional ECMO Program. Dr. Suttner discusses the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (CPQCC) as a model for statewide neonatal quality improvement, the importance of family centered communication in the NICU, and the value of state level professional organizations in advancing advocacy for neonatal healthcare funding and pediatric subspecialty reimbursement.

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