At a teaching hospital, multiple care providers with varying degrees of training participate in the clinical care of neonates and communicate with their families. Parents occasionally feel that they receive mixed messages or are confused as to who has ultimate responsibility for their baby’s management.

Everyone on the health care team should cooperate to ensure that parents know and have talked with their attending neonatologist. While it is ultimately the attending’s responsibility to meet parents, nurses, residents, and fellows are asked to facilitate this process by asking parents if they can identify their attending physician, and if not by hastening an introduction.

Discussed at Clinical Division Meetings 8/20/01 and 10/22/01.