Aoti Campus Neonatology Ward

Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University has a long history in neonatology. Its origins can be traced back to the pediatric neonatology specialty group established in the 1950s; the Department of Neonatology became formally independent in 2004, and the Department of Neonatology at the East Campus was established in 2013. As one of the first national-level training bases for specialist physicians in neonatal perinatal medicine and as the Shandong Provincial Critical Neonatal Care Center, the department was approved in 2025 as a leading scientific and technological innovation team for “Offspring Health Research” in the health sector of Shandong Province. It currently has two wards, at the Central Campus and the Olympic Sports Center Campus, with 92 open beds. It is one of the departments with the largest number of neonatal beds among provincial comprehensive tertiary Grade A hospitals, and integrates medical care, teaching, scientific research, health care, and guidance for primary-level institutions.

The department makes full use of the advantages of a leading provincial comprehensive hospital, collaborating with Obstetrics, Pediatric Surgery, Cardiac Surgery, Anesthesiology, Cardiac Ultrasonography, and other departments to establish a perinatal multidisciplinary collaboration platform for high-risk infants. It took the lead in carrying out in-utero referrals and obstetrics–neonatology collaboration, enabling the efficient rescue and treatment of acute and critical cases, including extremely preterm infants, critical complex congenital heart disease, and congenital developmental malformations of the digestive tract. In recent years, the department has achieved routine healthy survival of extremely immature infants with gestational ages of 24 weeks or more and extremely low-birth-weight infants with birth weights of 450 g or more; the lowest gestational age among successfully treated patients was 23+3 weeks and the lowest birth weight was 390 g, reaching the level of moderately developed European countries. At the same time, the department runs a neonatal health-care outpatient clinic and a follow-up outpatient clinic for preterm infants, providing whole-course guidance for the long-term health management of high-risk infants after discharge and for family-based intelligent care and nurturing of infants and young children.

As a leader in neonatal medicine in Shandong Province, the department has always adhered to the mission of “revering and protecting life, saving the dying and healing the injured,” upheld the service tenet of “patient-centered” care, and is committed to building a nationally first-class and internationally renowned hub for perinatal medicine and neonatal clinical research and translation.

Talent Strength and Faculty

The department has a professionally strong technical team with a well-balanced structure. It currently has 86 medical and nursing staff, including 23 specialist physicians (5 chief physicians and 5 associate chief physicians) and 63 nursing staff (6 with master’s degrees). Among the physicians, 8 hold doctoral degrees and 15 hold master’s degrees; there is 1 doctoral supervisor and 5 master’s supervisors, forming a high-level talent echelon at the national and provincial levels.

In terms of academic influence, Professor Yu Yonghui, director of the department, serves as Executive Chair of the Northern China Neonatal Collaboration Network (SNN), and concurrently serves as a committee member of the Neonatal Resuscitation Group of the Perinatal Medicine Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, a committee member of the Rare Diseases Group of the Pediatrics Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, and Chair of the Perinatal Medicine Big Data Branch of the Shandong Medical Doctor Association, among other important academic positions. Professor Yu also serves as Guest Editor-in-Chief of “Frontiers in Pediatrics” and as a member of the editorial boards of the “Chinese Journal of Perinatal Medicine” and the “Chinese Journal of Neonatology.” Several core members of the department serve as vice chairs, committee members, and in other positions on academic committees at the provincial level and above, significantly enhancing the academic influence of perinatal medicine and neonatology in Shandong Province both domestically and internationally.

The department attaches great importance to teaching and talent development. It undertakes teaching, internships, and clinical observerships for international students, graduate students, and undergraduates at Shandong First Medical University, as well as the training of physicians undertaking further study, standardized residency training, and national continuing medical education programs. Over the past three years, it has trained a total of 34 graduate students; multiple graduation theses were rated Outstanding Graduate Theses of Shandong University, and multiple graduate students were rated Outstanding Graduate Students of Shandong University. Each year, the department holds the national continuing medical education program “Perinatal Management and Quality Improvement Training Course for Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants” and a province-wide neonatal resuscitation skills training course, continuously promoting the cultivation of regional neonatal medical professionals and the improvement of technical standards.

Research Strength and Innovation & Translation

Guided by clinical needs and focusing on major scientific questions in the perinatal management of preterm infants and critically ill neonates, the department has built an integrated research system of “multicenter clinical research–real-world data–quality improvement.” In 2016, it established a single-center clinical research database for preterm infants; in 2018, it took the lead in creating the online data platform of the Northern China Neonatal Collaboration Network (SNN) (www.snn-med.com) and a very preterm infant birth cohort, covering 52 NICUs in 6 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China and undertaking multiple multicenter prospective cohort studies and quality-improvement projects. It registered and conducted 7 real-world studies and 1 multicenter RCT clinical study in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry and the U.S. Clinical Trial Registry, formed a multidisciplinary expert team for clinical research, and gradually established a scientific methodology system for clinical research.

Over the past 5 years, the department has published more than 20 papers in SCI-indexed journals (including 4 original articles in TOP journals), with a cumulative impact factor of nearly 100 points, as well as 30 original articles in journals of the Zhonghua series. Department members have led projects including the National Natural Science Foundation of China General Program “Clinical Special Project,” Youth Science Fund Project (Category C), General and Youth Projects of the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, the Qilu Special Project of the Shandong Medical Association, and the Advantageous and Characteristic Clinical–Basic Multidisciplinary Interdisciplinary Special Project of Shandong First Medical University. The research achievements have received 2 second prizes of the Shandong Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award. In addition, the department has led or participated in formulating multiple expert consensuses, such as the “Expert Consensus on Oral Vitamin K for Preventing Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding in Infants (2024 Edition),” and has obtained multiple national invention patents and software copyrights, fully demonstrating its leading position in neonatal clinical research and translational application.

The department adheres to the coordinated development of “clinical care–research–teaching,” relies on the multicenter collaboration platform, and uses quality improvement and clinical research as dual driving forces. It continuously promotes innovation and dissemination of neonatal diagnosis and treatment technologies, making an important contribution to the high-quality development of perinatal medicine and neonatology in China.