Reflecting on the 1st Year of a Universal cCMV Screening Program: The Nurse Practitioner Perspective

In July 2019, Ontario became the first Canadian province (and the first region in the world) to begin screening all newborns for #CMV at birth as part of their hearing risk factor screening.

Thank you to Andrea Baptista, Lisa Hicks and Alanna Webster, the incredible Nurse Practitioners who are organizing and facilitating the care for the babies who test positive, for their presentation yesterday. They shared key findings, successes and challenges from this novel cCMV screening program.

About the presenters:

Andrea Baptista is a Nurse Practitioner in the Infectious Diseases Clinic at The Hospital for Sick Children, and Regional Program Lead for the Greater Toronto Area with the Congenital CMV Program offered through Newborn Screening Ontario.

Lisa Hicks is a Nurse Practitioner working in the Department of Infectious Diseases at The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and Regional Program Lead for the Ottawa and Kingston areas.

Alanna Webster is a Nurse Practitioner in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at McMaster Children’s Hospital, and the Regional Program Lead for the Hamilton and London areas.

All three of the NPs were instrumental in helping to design and implement the screening program we are going to discuss in our presentation.