About

The Birth of My NICU Network

This course was developed when three passionate and experienced women with the support of their
respected organizations, came together to address the known gap that Neonatal units still have work to do to improve their family centered care and family support practices.

Based on the overwhelming evidence that families of babies hospitalized in the NICU should be intimately involved in the babies’ care from the moment they are admitted in order to facilitate optimal healing for both baby and family, and to ensure a strong and healthy family unit at the time of the baby’s discharge and beyond, these women were determined to not only help support NICU professionals learn the importance of supporting families but also provide them the tools necessary to improve their daily practices.

With their leadership and their strategic vision, along with a team of other professionals and NICU graduate parents, MyNICUnetwork was born.

Sue Hall MD, MSW

Dr. Sue Hall, the Lead Author of the course, has been a neonatologist for more than 25 years, and before that she worked as a master’s level social worker. She has a BA from Stanford University, an MSW from Boston University, and an MD from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She completed training in Pediatrics and Neonatology at The Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, then joined the faculty at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine where she was affiliated for 19 years. Now in private practice at a community hospital NICU in Oxnard, California, Dr. Hall was the Co-Chair of the National Perinatal Association's (NPA) Workgroup on “Interdisciplinary Recommendations for Psychosocial Support of NICU Parents,” which resulted in publication of a supplement issue of Journal of Perinatology in December, 2015. Working with NPA, she was instrumental in designing and launching the resource website www.support4nicuparents.org, and she has spearheaded development of online NICU staff education course. Dr. Hall is the Chief Medical Advisor for Your NICU Baby, an online NICU parent education series developed by The Wellness Network. She is also the author of 25 publications in the medical literature as well as a book about life in the NICU, titled For the Love of Babies, published in June, 2011.

Sara Mosher RN, BSN,MHA

Sara Mosher, who has a bachelors of science in nursing degree from Linfield College and a Masters in Healthcare Administration from University of Phoenix, has been in nursing practice since 2001. Her career has primarily been spent as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit fulfilling such roles as bedside nurse, clinical practice coordinator, critical care neonatal flight nurse, NICU family support specialist and interim manager of a NICU and Pediatric Department. Sara is recognized as a leader, teacher and mentor in the neonatal community including being awarded the Oregon Pediatric Nurse of the Year award in 2009, the Oregon Community Health Nurse of the Year Award in 2011 and the Lloydena Grimes Nursing Excellence Award in 2015. Sara has been a nationally sought out speaker on family centered topics, as of 2017 had her third scholarly nursing article published and by 2018 will have her first book published with Springer Publishing titled “Care Coordination in the NICU: Implementation of Family Centered Nursing Care for Optimal Outcomes. Sara’s passion throughout her career has always been the family experience and improving family centered care practices and thus became the founder of Patient+Family Care in 2014.

Keira Sorrells, BA

Keira Sorrells is the mother of triplets born at 25 weeks, 5 days gestation. Ms. Sorrells spent nine and a half months in the NICU with her girls and experienced every parent’s greatest fear when one of her daughters died at 14 months old. These traumas led Ms. Sorrells to launch the Zoe Rose Memorial Foundation, a non-profit that supports NICU families, in 2008. She soon became keenly aware that the voice of the NICU parent was underrepresented in the world of Maternal and Infant Health In response, Ms. Sorrells helped launch and now serves as President of the Preemie Parent Alliance (PPA). PPA a national network of NICU parent support organizations that is dedicated to representing the needs and best interests of NICU families in all facets of healthcare policy, care guidelines, advocacy, education, and family support. Ms. Sorrells strongly believes that no single organization can serve all the needs of all NICU families, only through collaboration can the true voice of the NICU parent be represented appropriately.