Dr Natalie Duffy

Dr Nat Duffy is a Consultant Neonatologist, working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Mercy Hospital for Women, Heidelberg, a busy tertiary neonatal unit caring for infants born from 22 weeks to full term. She also works for PIPER, the Paediatric Infant and Perinatal Emergency Retrieval service, based at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

In NICU, she is the medical lead for the infant and family centred neurodevelopmental care special interest group and has co-authored the statewide guidelines on this same topic. For PIPER, she works closely with Ambulance Victoria, teaching paramedics how to safely care for infants born out of hospital.

Nat is a Newborn Behavioural Observations (NBO) trainer, with NBO Australasia, teaching the Newborn Behavioral Observation system to Oceania and beyond. She has co-authored the Newborn Traffic Light Tool©, a learning resource for clinicians to utilise when supporting infants during times of pain and stress.

Her research interests lie with infant mental health and trauma informed neurodevelopmental care. She is completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. She has utilised qualitative methodology to explore an infant’s lived experience of hospitalisation in NICU. Nat has numerous publications in this field and has been the invited speaker at both local and international conferences.