March 2026 FCC Community Exchange

Thank you to the 130+ members who joined us for this month’s FCC Community Exchange session! A huge thank you to Jess Daigle, MD, FAAP and Alex Zavala, Family Partner who shared ways to establish trust during high-stakes medical decisions and overcome disagreements between clinicians and families.

Highlights:

• Mindsets need to shift from viewing parents as “adversaries” to seeing them as essential partners in their infant’s care team
• When parents challenge clinician recommendations, it doesn’t make them ignorant or negligent, it means they want more information
• Make trust-building an initial priority when families enter the NICU, this looks like defining terminology, explaining staff roles, giving a tour of the unit, and allowing time for questions
• Providers have to intentionally create a space of safety, upon which traumatic events can be experienced
• Broken trust is like a broken bone; we can’t fix it, we have to create space around it for it to heal
• Ego and compassion cannot sit at the same table, and compassionate disagreement starts with humble inquiry
• Ask parents, ‘How does this plan align with your family’s cultural practices?’
• Ask families what their understanding of the care plan is, and guide accordingly
• Utilizing psychosocial peers (social work, child life, etc.) can help support intense conversations
• Remember that by the time we are sharing the idea of a G-tube,trach, etc., we are often already at the point of “knowing” it will be necessary; we need to give parents the same time to process and understand