Counselling in a hospital-based newborn screening service.
The newborn screening and parent counselling service at Howard University Hospital is an integral component of services to newborn infants. The organization of this service presents a model that appears appropriately suited to the general organization of health-care delivery in the United States. Significant features of this service are: hospital-based planning and management of the service; integration of multiscreening components into a unified service; tight integration between screening, education, and counselling; a hospital-based team that provides coherent and in-depth counselling for all screening-related needs; a forum for orienting parents to the benefits of preventive health care; and a context in which to teach students the applied aspects of preventive health care based on early detection of disorders. If we are to have high quality newborn services in this area it may be incumbent on hospital-based health professionals to designate this as a required component of adequate hospital-based services for newborn infants rather than relinquishing the initiative to centralized health planners and legislators.
D003376:Counseling; D004219:District of Columbia; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007232:Infant, Newborn, Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control*; D008403:Mass Screening; D010044:Outpatient Clinics, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education