Neonatal and perinatal medicine encompasses the diagnosis, treatment, and management of health and developmental issues in newborn infants, including those born preterm, with low birth weight, or with medical, surgical, or developmental conditions. This speciality collaborates in multidisciplinary teams that include allied health professionals, nurses, and midwives, and works closely with obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine in the antenatal counselling of high-risk pregnancies.

Neonatal and perinatal medicine focuses on the provision of family-centred care to newborn infants, including critically ill neonates, using a multidisciplinary team approach. This care can occur in pre-hospital, hospital, and follow-up settings.

Neonatal and perinatal specialists provide a range of care, including:

Assessing, diagnosing, and managing complex medical and surgical issues. Neonatologists lead the coordination of care, in consultation with subspecialty medical, surgical, and allied health specialists, where required, to formulate management plans for their patients. In some settings, neonatologists provide ongoing management following discharge from the acute setting, such as the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), including long-term growth and developmental follow-up in the outpatient clinic setting, before transitioning care to another physician.

Perform challenging technical procedures. Neonatologists are expected to be able to perform challenging technical procedures on sick infants.

Provide resuscitation. Neonatologists provide initial and ongoing resuscitation of sick newborn infants with respiratory and haemodynamic support.

Manage transport. Neonatologists manage the transport of newborns and infants who require transfer to a care setting more appropriate to their needs.

Counselling expecting parents and carers. Neonatologists counsel expectant parents following the diagnosis of fetal anomalies or threatened preterm labour.

Provide end-of-life care. Neonatologists provide care for dying sick neonates at all gestational ages, with knowledge of providing appropriate palliative treatment.

Work in a range of settings. Neonatal and perinatal medicine practice is predominantly in an academic setting within NICUs, with outreach to other areas of the hospital, including the delivery room and postpartum ward, as well as hospitals outside the academic institution. With increasing complexity of perinatal care, neonatologists are also required to practice in hospitals without NICUs, including private and public community hospitals.

Neonatal and perinatal medicine specialists provide leadership and work effectively in multidisciplinary teams. These specialists have skills and knowledge in:

  • Multidisciplinary collaboration

    The highly specialised care neonatologists provide is delivered by working effectively with multidisciplinary teams of doctors and nurses from different specialities, psychologists, other allied health care professionals, and social workers to improve the physical and mental conditions in which families with an unwell infant find themselves.

  • Leadership and management

    Neonatologists have the ability to provide team leadership and clinical skills training.

  • Care for patients and families

    Neonatologists recognise the needs of the parents, carers, and families of newborn infants as a whole, and care for them compassionately.

  • Professional and ethical practice

    Neonatologists often face difficult discussions with families in the antenatal and postnatal environment regarding counselling about care, management, prognostication, and, potentially, palliative care. Ethical and medicolegal knowledge and its application are central to many of these discussions.

  • Medical knowledge and emotional intelligence

    It is the combination of intensive care skills, ethical and emotional support, and clinic follow-up that make this a unique specialty.

Last modified: Thursday, 27 November 2025, 12:21 PM