HERE’S AN INTERESTING (READ: SCARY) STATISTIC: Only 15% of neonatal therapists surveyed in 2013 were initially mentored for greater than 6 months while 36% had no direct mentorship at all. (Sturdivant, C. 2013.)
The problem with those numbers?
Neonatal therapy is recognized as an advanced practice area by NANT, APTA, AOTA, and ASHA. And yet…here you are with no consistent pathway to begin in the NICU. We simply must do better than that.
But here’s the thing: The gold standard is 1:1 mentoring by an experienced and highly trained neonatal therapist. No argument there. But at NANT, we receive emails from hundreds of you who have NO ACCESS to such a person.
Does this sound familiar?
- Your NICU is geographically isolated and you have no way to connect with anyone in person.
- You work in a huge city but since neonatal therapists are newer to your hospital’s NICU team, there’s no one there to orient or mentor you and you don’t have time to run all over the city.
- You’ve joined NANT, learned a ton from the resources here and now realize that your original orientation and mentorship experiences weren’t all that accurate or comprehensive.
- Or maybe, like so many of you who contact us, you live halfway across the world and have zero access to anyone else in this specialty.
- While you do attend live events, it would be great to participate in something more comprehensive and cost effective online.
- Flip side: You are the person responsible for mentoring every new neonatal therapist in your hospital and you are weary from the huge time commitment needed every time there’s turnover. (Not to mention trying to create or keep up with the latest resources.)
We hear you.
The gold standard is fantastic. AND you can’t wait around any longer to see if it will become a reality for you. You have fragile patients to see and you want to feel confident that you’re doing the right thing. You need mentoring from a reliable source and you want to be able to talk to real people. You can’t wait to eliminate the worry and uncertainty and build a solid evidence-based practice.
You’ve been shouting out into the void.
Until now.
Learn from nationally recognized neonatal therapy mentors Chrysty Sturdivant, OTR and Sandra Carroll, OTR in a year-long program called IGNITE. It is designed to take you from a place of uncertainty and isolation to a place of confidence and community. AND you will participate in guest lectures presented by all 3 professions (OT, PT, SLP).
*CEUs are provided and are applicable to the total number of NICU specific educational hours needed to apply for neonatal therapy certification.
IGNITE provides you with foundational education in the art and science of neonatal therapy along with tangible, printable tools and resources that can be immediately incorporated into your practice.
Enrollment for the 2017-2018 class of IGNITE will open during NANT 7. You can register at the conference or online starting April 7th. In the meantime, click here to learn more about IGNITE.
NOTE: We’ll be hosting a special ‘Meet Your Mentors’ lunch at NANT 7 on Saturday April 8th. You can choose to sign up for this lunch in an upcoming survey that will be sent to registered participants. Stay tuned! (No additional cost to attend this lunch.)
