Today I collaborated with my nurse preceptor, the physician, and anesthesiologist. I assisted my nurse preceptor in taking vital signs every thirty minutes to an hour and monitoring the patient’s uterine contractions and fetal heart rate. In addition, my nurse preceptor allowed me to administer the Tylenol and hang the LR bags. She also showed me how to piggy bag a medication, when she was preparing the IV bag with amoxicillin. In addition, when my nurse preceptor would go into the room to read the fetal monitoring strip, she showed me exactly what she was looking at and explained to me what each segment meant. It was clear that although the fetus was experiencing accelerations with a moderate variability, it was extremely elevated. Furthermore,…
References: McKinney, E., & Murray, S. (2014). Foundations of Maternal – Newborn and Women’s Health Nursing, (6th Ed). St. Louis: Elsevier.…
Twenty-three to thirty-four weeks is a small amount of time in order to develop into a fully functioning human being. When these small patients are born into this world they are most likely rushed into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they address their short development time as well as any underlying medical problems, whether they be associated with their development or not. These patients are our smallest and most fragile, but also some of our loneliest. Many times nursing units within hospitals are understaffed and the nurses simply do not have time to spend just holding or speaking softly to an infant going through treatment. This is where "NICU Cuddlers" come into play. These volunteer groups are starting to crop up in hospitals around…
It was a period of trial and error, never receiving a diagnosis of what the exact cause of this situation. It was by my son’s determination and God’s will that he was able to recover and come home after 16 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Only a person who has walked through the darkness of hell knows the emotional turbulence of grief, anger and shock when seeing their child go through such an…
The birth of a baby should be an exciting and joyful time, but sometimes unexpected and serious complications arise, requiring specialized care. The 45 bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit45-bed (NICU) provides the latest diagnostics and treatment options for very small and sick infants.…
My school always required volunteer hours in the community; that’s how I originally began working with Emergency Infant Services. I joined their Junior Board of Directors after two years of volunteering. I worked in a group setting to create and promote a benefit concert for a local charity three times over my years there. I did everything from marketing to stage management as chairman of the Entertainment Committee. While I had to work with other people and help coordinate the acts onstage and the activities at the event. During the event, I had to manage time and problem solve when acts did not show up on time and move things around so the show would run smoothly. We surpassed our goal and raised over $40,000 to help families in need with…
In the NICU often times it can be hard to find our teeny tiny patients underneath all of the medical equipment. Pre-term newborns are a unique and a vulnerable population due to the multi-systemic underdevelopment . Understanding the role of the external environment on the patient’s physiological manifestations is of great importance to the profession of nursing (Standley, 2007). The instinctive nature of the human body and human population leaves room for many uncontrollable variables. Nursing professionals are challenged with using clinical reasoning to apply and adapt interventions that are evidence-based, and patient centered in the clinical practice setting. The concept of having control to manipulate the external environment to produce positive patient outcomes and promote development and healing is an ideal…
Bringing home a new baby can be an exciting time for many parents but it can also be a time of stress and anxiety. Parents naturally want to do the best for their newborns and endeavour to care for them safely through infancy , childhood and beyond. Unfortunately, around 80 infants die from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in Australia each year, this equates to approximately 0.4 deaths per 1000 births (SIDSandkids 2012" ABS 2008). SIDS and Kids Australia define SIDS as 'the sudden death of an infant or young child which is unexpected by history and in which a thorough post-mortem examination fails to demonstrate an adequate cause of death ' (sidsinfopaper, 2003).Fleming (2007, p.721) writes that…
Health care providers and nurses have the opportunity to promote the maternal-newborn bond through breastfeeding, encouraging skin-to-skin contact, newborn massage, and eye contact during the first postpartum hour. There are some barriers for the maternal-newborn bonding process that hospitals may have such as (preterm newborn, lack of support, a cesarean birth, maternal fatigue, and emotional stress). These barriers can be used by hospitals to evaluate strategies for overcoming it in a way that promotes bonding process and they should have protocols to include an hour of uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact after vaginal and cesarean birth in order to promote optimal maternal-newborn bonding.…
When my twin baby brothers were born they were struggling to make it for the first 24 hours of their lives. They were placed in an incubator to assist them in the fight. Though I was six years of age, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of them. Peering through the see-through glass watching their small bodies hooked up to machinery, I could hear my mother praying over the lives of her baby boys. While watching the TLC network at the age of eight, the premature infants and pregnant mothers were working and fighting hard. Watching this show reminded me of my mother and the fight my baby brothers had to endure. It was then that I realized working with infants was my calling. The doctors told my mother that my brothers were too tiny and might not survive.…
The purpose of this study is significant to nursing in that it identifies an especially vulnerable population of neonates and the increased needs of this population. This group of medically at-risk infants should be more closely monitored and followed with regular developmental screenings and frequent visits to the pediatrician in order to identify areas in which they may be lacking in development. Families of these infants need education regarding cognitive and motor development and guidelines of when their child should reach specific milestones. These families also need a plan to assist their child in attaining these milestones.…
Aurilio, L, Chatham C, et al Maternal-Neonatal Nursing Made Easy, Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2003…
The problem that this study addresses is the development of infants physically, emotionally, and connectively with their mothers. Neu and Robinson (2010) have found that newborns need early care in order for emotional and physiological development. The research also resulted in reports of these early care methods, such as kangarooing and skin to skin contact with the mother and child to benefit the mother as well as the newborn. This is significant to nursing because premature care paves the way for the child’s growth and the mother’s ability to bond with the baby. These positive effects promote healthy lifestyles and nurturing relationships.…
Newborns are amongst the most precious of gifts on earth, especially for a mother. This new gift of life continuously changes and affects the lives of all the people involved in the birth and life of a baby.…
The result in table 2 indicates that the campaign is embodied in an administrative order entitled "Adopting New Policies and Protocol on Essential Newborn Care (ENC)," which details specific policies and principles to follow for all health-care providers involved in the care of the mother and the newborn. This also implies overall coverage regarding the health of mother and child and the family. The data also implies that the current policy of WHO, UNICEF and DOH on the new Partnership for Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health will also bring together many agencies and organizations to improve outcomes for women and neonates.…