Lung sounds on newborns...help

Altra, BSN, RN · Jan 21, 2005

It's certainly a different skill than auscultating adult heart/lung sounds.

Are you using a steth with an infant/pedi chest piece? The adult ones are so large on an infant's torso -- you'd probably be hearing heart, lung & bowel sounds all mixed together! :rolleyes: The newborn nursery and the NICU where I had clinicals had a bunch of "communal" infant steths - see if there's one that you can use.

Since the sounds are different than the adult sounds you're more familiar with, you'll probably need to make an effort to minimize other noise, just like when you were first learning to take vitals. The apical pulse can be difficult to count because it's so fast. I had trouble discerning different lung fields at first - even with an infant steth. But it gets better with practice.

Good luck to you. :)

Love4Me, RN · Jan 21, 2005

Thanks for the reply. I am using an adult scope because our teacher said it would be fine. I will see if they have any infant scopes that I can borrow. I told my instructor that I was having a difficult time with the breath sounds and she just said keep practicing. So I guess it is just me and my book (and whatever suggestions I get here). So thanks.

Matrona~Revolucion · Jan 21, 2005

I just would like to second the infant scope advice. I don't think I could ever find, let alone, listen to neonatal lungs with an adult stethoscope. Granted, I'm green, but they are manufactured for a reason. I don't know of any CNM who doesn't carry the infant scope. HTH.

Aneroo, LPN · Jan 21, 2005

Ditto on the peds scope. When I did peds rotation, they had tiny lil littmans. NICE had even smaller scopes. Even on some of them, it's too big. The RN i spoke to said to practice also when I was asking which was which.