Helen Douglass is a Neonatal Digital Nurse Specialist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne. Helen’s career pathway started in neonatal nursing which she has done for over 20 years. She spent 18 years of that in a clinical setting, working primarily in neonatal intensive care, an area of practice she has always loved, and where she felt most confident and comfortable. 

When the unit began planning a move to a digital solution for their patient record, she took on the digital nurse role as a temporary secondment to help lead the project. The role later became permanent and she has stayed in the post since then.

Although moving away from hands-on clinical work was a big change, she still feels that her clinical experience continues to influence her work, even when she’s not at the cot side.

Training, Troubleshooting and Patient Safety

A typical day in Helen’s role varies, but much of her time is spent delivering training and education on BadgerNet. This often overlaps with clinical teaching, especially when she’s working with newly qualified nurses, junior doctors, or students, as the digital and clinical aspects naturally link together.

She also deals with a lot of troubleshooting, whether that’s supporting staff to understand how to use the system or working with the IT team to solve technical issues. Her work involves regular collaboration with different teams, not just digital and she collaborates closely with the maternity team as they move towards a more joined-up perinatal approach.

Another part of her role involves development work, which includes meeting with corporate and executive teams to look at how services can be improved and how local or national strategies can be built into digital processes.

She is also closely involved in patient safety. This includes contributing to learning from incidents, reviewing care and making sure digital systems support safer practice.

Clinical Knowledge at the Heart of Digital Rollouts

Helen believes the most important factor in a successful digital rollout is strong clinical knowledge. While understanding the digital system is essential, she stresses that having a clinical background is what truly shapes good decision-making. Knowing what day-to-day work looks like “on the shop floor” helps ensure the system actually supports real clinical processes. She realised during the project just how vital that experience was and it’s something she often discusses when other units contact her for advice before going live.

She also feels her trust has been fortunate to have a dedicated digital nurse post, as many organisations have digital midwives but far fewer have digital nurses. Helen sees the clinical insight brought by these roles as crucial to getting implementation right.

Another key piece of advice from Helen is to build a strong team around you. Digital change is not something one person can deliver alone. During their go-live, they created a group of around eight digital champions who received extra training and supported colleagues on the floor. They’ve continued in these roles ever since, now helping with audits and education.

For Helen, a major takeaway is that the work doesn’t stop once the system goes live. The support and involvement of the wider team needs to continue and having well-trained digital champions makes a huge difference long-term.

Leading the Go-Live of BadgerNet

Helen’s favourite project of her career so far has been leading the go‑live of BadgerNet. The move from paper records to a digital system was a huge change for the whole unit, especially for staff who had worked the same way for many years, including her. Supporting such a large team through such a big shift was challenging, but also very rewarding.

Seeing the project come together, watching staff adapt and knowing the change was successful has been the most satisfying project to date.

The BadgerNet badger holding baby badger.

Helen’s Advice for Future Digital Nurses

Helen’s advice to others who are interested in becoming a digital nurse is to reach out and connect with other units, even though there still aren’t many neonatal digital nurse specialists. She has found clinical specialists extremely helpful for making connections and supporting networking.

Helen also says that networking is crucial, whether that’s through other neonatal units or through digital midwives, who often have strong links with neonatal digital nurses. She believes that reaching out for advice helps people understand why the role is important and why digital support is needed.

Helen also feels that it is essential for teams to understand the benefits of digital nurses, as funding for these posts depends on people recognising their value. Stronger awareness makes it easier to get posts approved and sustained.

Improving Continuity Across Systems

Looking ahead, Helen wants to focus on improving continuity across systems. At the moment, one of her biggest frustrations is that different systems don’t communicate with each other as smoothly as they should. She believes that better integration would not only make life easier for staff but also improve patient safety, as problems often arise when information isn’t visible everywhere it needs to be.

One key area she wants to develop is equipment integration, which the unit doesn’t currently have. She feels this would make a significant difference to both safety and workflow and it’s a major goal for the next stage of their digital development.

Helen also wants to keep improving the continuity between maternity and neonatal care. Although things are functioning well, she sees room for improvement, especially in terms of following the full patient journey and strengthening transitional care. With their standalone transitional care unit, which is quite unusual, as most transitional care happens within maternity or postnatal wards, she is especially keen to see this area enhanced. At the moment the service sits in a bit of a “grey zone,” and she would like to bring more clarity and better support to it in the future.

Next Steps

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