Mentorship is crucial for career development in healthcare. This report describes the ESPNIC Mentorship Program, established in 2021, which pairs junior healthcare professionals with senior mentors to support career goals. Over four years, 83 pairs were formed, including diverse participants from various roles and countries. Demographic information and feedback forms from mentors and mentees were collected systematically via online surveys at 12-month intervals at the start and end of the program. These data were thematically evaluated to find important areas of satisfaction and recommendations for development. Participants from low and middle income countries were enrolled in the program as well representing 26% of the mentees (22/83) and 10% of mentors (7/67). Women represented 50% (34/67) of mentors; and 71% (59/83) of mentees. Key areas of collaboration included career development, research, international networking, and clinical support. The program emphasised a voluntary and non-judgemental approach, fostering a positive experience for both mentors and mentees, and Feedback from both mentors and mentees so far has been very positive. The ESPNIC Mentorship Program serves as a model for other professional societies seeking to enhance member support and foster career advancement in paediatric and neonatal critical care.

PURPOSE: As the group of technology-dependent children with long-term tracheostomy continues to expand, we aimed to explore parents' lived experience of everyday life with a child dependent on long-term tracheostomy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Six parents of four children were interviewed and the transcripts analyzed using Giorgi's descriptive phenomenology.

RESULTS: All aspects of everyday life, parent-child interaction, and interaction with the surrounding outside world were affected by technology dependency. Parents played an active role by acting both as a protective shield between the outside world and the child and as an enabling bridge to help the child interact with the outside world. The active and involved role of parents is interwoven in all aspects, levels, and directions of interaction and everyday life. The lived experiences can be described in four themes: caution and risk awareness due to technology, meeting the demands of technology dependence, strained and constrained by technology dependence, and conflicted feelings about technology dependence.

CONCLUSIONS: Long-term tracheostomy and technology-dependency affect and shape everyday life. Practical implications from the study suggest that re-design and co-design between all stakeholders involved are needed to support parental well-being, coping and enhance patient safety for this growing population and their parents.

Introduction A growing number of parents are navigating parenthood influenced by medical complexity and technological dependency as the group of children with long-term tracheostomy grows. However, little is known regarding the parental experiences of parenthood for this heterogeneous group of children now surviving through infancy and intensive care.Objective This study aimed to analyze how parents of children who have received a tracheostomy adapted to parenthood.Methods Interviews were conducted and analyzed following a constructivist grounded theory approach. Ten parents of seven children living with a tracheostomy in Sweden were recruited via the long-term intensive care unit (ICU).Results The core variable of parenthood "Stuck in survival" was explained by two categories and six subcategories. The category "Unaddressed previous history" describes the experiences from being in the ICU environment and how the parents are not able, due to insufficient time and resources, to address these stressful experiences. The category "Falling through the cracks of a rigid system" describes how the parents found themselves and their children to be continuously ill-fitted in a medical system impossible to adapt to their needs and situation. Parents placed the starting point of parenthood with the birth of the child, whilst the tracheotomy only constituted a turning point and would lead to the loss of any previously held expectations regarding parenthood.Conclusion This study identified a previously undescribed period prior to tracheostomy placement, which may have long-lasting effects on these families. The care provided in ICUs following the birth of a child who will require tracheostomy may not be tailored or adapted to accommodate the needs of these families leading to long-lasting effects on parenthood.