Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

In our 60 bed, level III unit, Breast milk is treated like a med. Parents are given the labels, they date & time. Parents are instructed in protecting the barcode. If the milk is from a mom who has twins or more, the labels are stacked, with each bar code sticker flagged so you can scan.

Scan pt to open the MAR. Then scan milk to match to pt. If you are fortifying: you also scan a "label for bottle" and every bottle of milk to mix, with acomment as to what the scan is for. The QI on Breastmilk scanning checks to make sure that the milk was scanned BEFORE the feeding time shown in the EMR. Because you should not be feeding before scanning/verification. Hope that helps.

Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

regular hospital labels (that go on our labs, etc) are on the milk bottles. Checked by two nurses, comparing it to the ID band taped to the babies isolette. Our babies do not wear ID bands that are perm. attached. They are on removable restraint foam things that we cut. To those that have a milk tech....we were informed from the fortifier companies that adding similac or other fortifiers to make a 22 or 24 calorie formula that it breaks down and should be done only at the time of feeding.

Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

Parents label their own breastmilk with a time/date & with another label that states the infants name & a barcode. When we draw up breastmilk we label our syringe with a label that has the infants name & a barcode & we have to scan the baby & both the bottle of breastmilk as well as the syringe/bottle we poured the breastmilk into. (basically like how we do meds)

Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

We provide parents with their baby's medical labels, and they write the date and time of collection on each label before placing it on their syringe/bottle. When it comes to retrieving the milk from the freezer/fridge we double check independently, the same as routine medications. If the milk is transferred to a syringe or bottle...we place an additional label on it for verification.

Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

Sorry-just realized you asked another question of me. Our unit visitation policy allows for two visitors per baby at the bedside at a time. One person must be banded and all visitors have to be over the age of 18, except that we do allow siblings over the age of 2 to visit with proper vaccine documentation.

Re: NICU NURSES....labeling breast milk???

I work in a 60 bed unit. We treat breastmilk as a med. The baby's admission band is scanned and then the label on the bottle is scanned. If the barcode won't scan, it is verified with another RN. We also must chart the feeding after the scan in the computer. We have a zero tolerance policy for charting a feed, and then scanning. We also scan when fortifying and put a comment that it wasn't actually given, but just mixed to fortify.