Objective: to develop and validate instructional design for clinical nursing care to neonates with congenital heart defects in maternities, using distance education. Method: applied methodological research which consisted of an online course for nurses in neonate units. During the development of the instructional design, the selection and creation of the virtual didactic content were carried out and submitted to internal validation by experts from different areas - Neonatal Nursing, Cardiovascular Nursing, Education, Distance Education, Instructional Design and Informatics. The study followed steps adapted from the instructional design process: analysis (identification and understanding of educational problem), design (specification), development (production), and evaluation (reflection). Results: nine experts concluded the assessment of the instructional design; six were from the Southeast, two from the Northeast, and one from the South region of Brazil. Seven were higher education professors with experience in education, in addition to their expertise. The Nursing, Education, and Design experts agreed on 91% of the answers to assessed items for the educational technology, considering it adequate. The experts of informatics obtained an agreement in only 70% of the assessed items, considering them questionable. The evaluations and recommendations of the experts led to some changes during the creation of the instructional design, prior to the proposal for clinical validation. Conclusion: the instructional design was approved as per the agreement of the experts’ opinions (85%), and the validation strategy involved different backgrounds, thus qualifying the technology and pointing out the importance of the topic for the qualification of nurses, using distance education resources.