NPMR Objectives

1. To develop and establish a national system/database for continuous national surveillance of all deaths in children aged 29 days to 15 completed years, regardless of cause and location.

2. To collaborate with Health Service Executive (HSE), Department of Health, and Department of Public Health to develop the national system/database and to promote best practice national guidelines (such as those incorporating safe sleep and child safety awareness).

3. To collaborate with stakeholders (e.g. individual hospitals and hospital groups, coroner service) in order to provide complete, standardised, robust and timely data on all childhood deaths.

4. To maintain a single national epidemiological database of information on all paediatric deaths from multiple sources, analyse data and report trends in rates and factors impacting on child mortality.

5. Use this information to provide evidence for informing policy aimed at improving outcomes and reducing the number of child deaths.

Benefits of NPMR

  • A national database which will provide accurate, validated and robust data to inform national policy.

  • Complete, standardised and timely data on mortality in the Irish paediatric population. The NPMR protocol identifies the causes of death and enables population trends to be tracked accurately in a timely manner

  • Indicators of national performance for comparison with international data.

  • Standardised data for validated comparisons between regions/age groups/causes.

  • Information identifying broader areas of concern requiring further attention and informing the agenda for further paediatriC audit and research.

  • Contribution to patient care improvement via clinical audit process. The NPMR will use quality measures that reflect the unique aspects of working with paediatric patients.

  • Information on autopsy rates, standards and quality relating to paediatric deaths.

  • Trends in accuracy and quality of cause of death registration details for paediatric deaths.

  • A resource for research studies of factors contributing to paediatric deaths.

Health Professionals

All cases of paediatric death should be reported to the NPMR. If you wish to notify the NPMR of a case, please email npmr@noca.ie and a Child Death Notification form will be issued to you for completion.