Med/Surg RN required to care for L&D patients

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I am a Med/Surg nurse with 20+ years' experience, recently due to budget cuts, my managers have mandated we begin caring for L & D Moms and babies. I am told this practice is a growing trend in healthcare. I feel L & D is a highly specialized area of nursing with great liability risks. My managers are mandating a 6 week on the job training course to prepare me for these new duties. Are there other nurses in a similar position and is this a new trend? Does anyone have comments or suggestions that I may use to support my reluctance to provide care for both Med/Surg and L&D/new borns.

Specializes in Med Surg - Renal.
I am a Med/Surg nurse with 20+ years' experience, recently due to budget cuts, my managers have mandated we begin caring for L & D Moms and babies. I am told this practice is a growing trend in healthcare. I feel L & D is a highly specialized area of nursing with great liability risks. My managers are mandating a 6 week on the job training course to prepare me for these new duties. Are there other nurses in a similar position and is this a new trend? Does anyone have comments or suggestions that I may use to support my reluctance to provide care for both Med/Surg and L&D/new borns.

I would welcome 6 weeks of training to float to L&D.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

I would personally like it. Idk about taking caring of babies but taking care of moms would be like taking care of a happy walkie talkie patient.

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Specializes in Oncology; medical specialty website.
Are the internists (MDs) also going to be managing laboring moms? That would be my first question. And undoubtedly the answer would be, "But that is outside their scope of practice/knowledge base." And then I would be quick to point out that the same is true of nursing. The OBs want L&D nurses who are specialists and can assess their patients accordingly. Same with the internists. Get the docs on your side.

You're my kind of gal. No one expects an OB-GYN to do heart surgery or see psychiatric patients. This whole "making yourself more marketable" and all the other cliches admin. hands out to excuse these hair-brained ideas is just pure BS.

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Specializes in Med Surg.
I would personally like it. Idk about taking caring of babies but taking care of moms would be like taking care of a happy walkie talkie patient.

I work med/surg at a small hospital and recently floated to our OB dept. Since I'm not an OB nurse, I worked the postpartum side. I loved it. It was so strange having healthy, walkie-talkie pts. The babies were adorable.

If you're getting the training, I'd say go for it. I don't know if it's a trend, but I like the idea of getting to do different floors--makes for a nice change of pace.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
on the other hand, L&D is a highly specialized area.......things can turn sour quickly and you have to be physically able to run code pink.....

Code pink? Infant abduction? Can't say I've ever experienced one in all my years of L&D.

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Specializes in ICU.

Since I just started my nursing career and was 25, when I told the nurses how much I loved it in Mother/Baby, they told me "this is where you come when you retire" I had a friend a few years older than me who worked ICU with me and went ot work there after her baby (our babies were born within 5 days of eachother) for an easier, slower, less stressful pace. She loves it!

Crap, the hospital where I gave birth, the moms GAVE THEMSELVES THEIR MEDICINE! Yup, the routine meds you were given bottles to keep at your bedside and to sign your own personal MAR. Those nurses did ALOT of reading.

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Specializes in critical care.
Code pink? Infant abduction? Can't say I've ever experienced one in all my years of L&D.

At the hospital where I am, pink is the infant equivalent of code blue.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
At the hospital where I am, pink is the infant equivalent of code blue.

Ah. Code blue for a neonate?

I've never worked at a facility that called a hospital-wide code for a neonate. Everyone there is trained in NRP and is expected to step in and provide resuscitation..

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Specializes in critical care.
Ah. Code blue for a neonate?

I've never worked at a facility that called a hospital-wide code for a neonate. Everyone there is trained in NRP and is expected to step in and provide resuscitation..

They only announce it on the L&D/PP floor. :)

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