Nurturing Tiny Lives: Pressure Injury Challenges in the NICU

Ann Marie Nie earned her PhD and is a Family Nurse Practitioner with a specialty in wound, ostomy and continence care.  Due to her work in wound care in the pediatric population, she is a WOCN fellow. She is currently employed at Dayton Children’s Hospital as a Wound NP and Pressure Injury Preventionist. Since 2006, she has strived to increase awareness of the difference in the ages of pediatric patients for pressure injury prevention. She was instrumental in creating pediatric pressure injury prevention program at 3 pediatric hospitals. She speaks nationally and internationally in pediatric PI prevention measures, wound care, ostomy and neonatal skin.  She has performed research on risk factors for PI development in all ages of pediatric patients from extremely premature infants to age 21 and is continuing her research to showcase PI preventions measures across the age spectrum. 

Katie McKeown is passionate about delivering family centered care to the NICU infants as a Certified neonatal nurse for over 20 years. Known by many of her colleagues as the "neonatal skin nurse", Katie possesses special skills in skin healing and neonatal wound care.

Katie is also passionate about infection prevention, with her research showing a connection between neonatal skin care and infection prevention with improved outcomes for preterm babies. She is experienced in the placement of PICC lines, and is NDNQI and WTA trained serving as a skin champion in the NICU for many years. She is also a family nurse practitioner with Mobile Wound Healing serving the community with advanced wound care. She specializes in the differential diagnosis of neonatal skin abnormalities and injuries—including infectious lesions—in fragile and low birth weight populations. Her research has led to publications and a patented device as well as an innovation grant, and she serves as the principal investigator on nursing studies focused on neonatal skin healing. She has presented her work at national and international wound care conferences and regularly speaks on these topics to clinical and academic audiences.