Special Care Nursery can mean different things at different facilities. Most commonly, it seems to be used to refer to a Level II newborn nursery. The scope of care provided in Level II units varies greatly from hospital to hospital. It tends to include stable full-term babies who need more than routine newborn care and stable preemies. For our Special Care Nursery, this tends to include kids of 28 or more weeks corrected age and tend to be 1000+ grams, but these are requirements. These kids may need oxygen (nasal cannula or hood box), IV fluids/TPN by peripheral or or PICC lines, NG feedings, medications, monitoring, etc. Some Special Care Nurseries also do CPAP and maybe stable, briefly vented kids. Other Special Care Nurseries that I know of rarely do IVs or NG feeds. So....that's all to say that there is a wide scope, and if this is important to you, you should ask if you are thinking about applying. Very sick (life-threatening) newborns will be transported to a Level III NICU.
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