Your local policy on caring for Jehovah's Witness neonates

Specialties NICU

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Specializes in NICU and neonatal transport.

Hi all, I know this is an often discussed topic but I'm writing an ethical paper on the differing care between babies of Jehovah's Witness and non JW families.

My thought is this... should we be giving ALL babies the same standards?

Locally we prescribe EPO and ensure v minimal bloods of all JW babies but not so much the non JW babies. I mean we are careful how much we sample of course, but it's not so strictly managed. We accept lower Hbs before transfusion too.

I wondered what you all did in your area.

Thanks so much, Debs

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, educator.

We pretty rarely transfuse kids unless they are micros. We use Epogen regularly on all kids.

We we really try to not transfuse JW kids, but if we have to we get a court order. We really don't treat them any differently.

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Specializes in NICU, Infection Control.

We told them up front that we would minimize blood draws, but, we couldn't help the baby w/o lab/bld gas info. Started them on Epogen right away, supplemental Fe as soon as feedings tolerated; Court order if necessary--we told them that up front, too.

Off topic: "Hello, lab, this is prmenrs from NICU. What do you need for [xyz] test?" "Oh, just send a 10ml red top." [pause] "Why don't I send you the whole 1 kilo baby, see what you can do?" "OOOOH, NICU!! A microtainer."

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Specializes in Critical Care.

We try very hard not to transfuse anyone, but we don't apply different thresholds for JW kids vs non-JW kids. We have a pretty routine process set up for getting a court order, parents actually seem pretty relieved when we do get a court order.

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Specializes in NICU and neonatal transport.

That's really interesting thanks, we tend to transfuse at least one baby each day, at least 10-15 pw I would estimate. This is a 50 bed NNU.

We only use EPO for JW babies, with the recent evidence of increased ROP our consultants are wary of it. I know we can sample less that we do, that will be my conclusion.

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Specializes in Neonatal Nurse Practitioner.

I haven't experienced it yet, but I know that we treat them the same and get court orders for blood products.

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