Barriers and Facilitators to Quality Care Delivery Among Neonatal Nurses: A Scoping Review

In neonatal nursing, multiple well-established challenges such as workforce shortages and concerns related to staff wellbeing are known to influence the delivery of safe, quality care (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2022). Nursing care is strongly linked to patient outcomes, and it is well recognised that understaffing increases the risk of adverse patient outcomes and compromises multiple aspects of care quality (Patrician et. al. 2024). While efforts are being directed towards addressing these workforce issues at a macro level (Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, 2024), it remains unclear how these challenges are experienced at a micro level, specifically by nurses working directly within newborn services. The purpose of this scoping review is to identify existing evidence describing neonatal nurses’ experiences in providing safe and quality care.