I am just wondering what your facility's criteria are for a babe to be admitted to well-baby nursery or mom's room (besides the usual bit that they are breathing....)
What are your criteria for gestational age? Ours is 35 weeks and over 4lb 14oz. But the reason I'm asking is that a few nights ago, neo resident calls our NBN charge and asks if she will take a 34 6/7 weeker who is pink & breathing. She calls out to the floor charge nurse who says she (floor charge) wouldn't take him. She asked a couple others of us who routinely do NBN charge and we all said no way. To close to call and that close, it's impossible to know that that kid is going to stay stable enough to go out c Mom.
Neo then calls back (this is around 0445) and says that technically he's 35 weeks as of midnight. So they kind of forced this nurse to take this baby even though she was obviously not comfortable with him being in well-baby nursery.
Outcome: kid comes in and about 5 minutes later quits breathing, desats (of course) and needs to be on O2. Needless to say he went right on over to NICU....
I personally feel that kids that close to the cutoff (since dates can be off by a couple days/weeks either way) need to go to NICU for obs at the very least. I was very irritated by our neo resident that night, even though I wasn't in charge in nursery. Most of our Neos/NNPs are great but this one really bothered me. I don't mind taking babies -- that's not the point -- but my goal is to get babies ready to back to Mom's room.
Venting done. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!
