Fetal Neurobehavioral Assessment: Use in Clinical Populations
Offered by the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Women & Infants Hospital, and Brown University Office of Continuing Education
Instructor(s): Amy Salisbury
Location: Brown Center for Children at Risk
Dates: June 8-12, 2009
Meeting Times: 9:00am -12 noon
Fee: $800
Application Due Date: May 15, 2009
Description: This course will highlight fetal neurobehavioral development, methods to assess fetal development, and the use of observations with clinical populations such as women diagnosed with major depression and/or or substance abuse. Options exist for students to become certified in collection of fetal neurobehavioral data and/or the FENS coding system. Students who are licensed nurses or physicians may opt to also become certified in data collection and will learn ultrasound recording and fetal heart rate monitoring for fetal neurobehavioral assessment. All students may opt to become certified in the FENS coding techniques and will learn to code fetal behaviors from video and fetal heart rate and actocardiograms.
Who should attend: Clinicians such as physicians, social workers, licensed nurses. Non-clinicians such as researchers and academics will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Course objectives: At the completion of the course participants will be able to:
- Describe fetal physical and motor development and the fetal central nervous system.
- Discuss critical periods for optimal fetal development.
- Engage pregnant women in therapeutic dialogue about their expectations, fetus’ development, and how to support optimal development.
Teaching strategies: Live and videotape observation, lecture and discussion, integrating technology
Evaluation: Students will be evaluated by three methods:
- A written test of basic fetal neurobehavioral development.
- Observation of clinical interview/interaction skills with the patients.
- Reliability testing of collected or scored data for those opting to become FENS certified.
Instructor Bio(s): Dr. Amy Salisbury was trained clinically at the University of Rhode Island as a clinical nurse specialist in child and family psychiatry. She obtained her Ph.D. in developmental psychobiology from the University of Connecticut. Combining these two career paths, Dr. Salisbury’s current clinical work focuses on infant and family psychosocial needs in the context of newborn intensive care, maternal mental illness, and infant and toddler sleep disorders. Her research examines prenatal and postnatal neurobehavioral development within a larger biopsychosocial framework. The long term goal of the research program is to examine why and how children develop mental illness to pinpoint where intervention would be most effective.
Dr. Salisbury heads The Fetal Behavior Studies Program, one of the many clinical research programs within the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, examining fetal and infant neurobehavioral development. Dr. Salisbury and her colleagues have developed an organized method of assessing fetal neurobehavior, called the Fetal Neurobehavior Coding System (FENS) which is currently being used to study the effects of fetal exposure to antidepressant medications, maternal depression, opiates, and maternal smoking.