Most of the nurses at the hospital I work at have always worked here, we deliver about 600/yr. I don't know who to ask or where to start. I really feel the need for some help for our drug abusing moms, and babies. We don't see much of it, but we are seeing more and more. We have no policy, no standards to guide us. If a woman comes in with no prenatal care, we ask the doc if we can get a UDS. That's pretty much it. I've recently had one who quit using 6 mo before her 1st ob appt....and no random or any drug screen during her pregnancy at all. When we do get a pos we call the child abuse hotline and I personally have gotten the response anywhere from they can't do anything unless the baby shows a pos screen, to being up in the dept within hrs (I'm assuming those probably were already in the system). We had our first full blown withdrawal baby over the weekend, and the nurses sat on it all evening/ night and into the day shift....stating, well his resps are over 100 because he's withdrawling...he's sweating and screaming etc because of that....when they finally did call, the doc ruled out infection with bc, cbc, cxr, ekg (which was next to impossible to get), THEN consulted someone at a bigger hospital and gave the little guy phenobarbitol.
I'm frustrated.
I would like to know what other facilities do, what resources are out there to help these moms during pregnancy and after, besides dhs taking the baby or whatever.
Does anyone do drug screens on all their moms? We have only one nurse that has worked elsewhere who says where she worked on the east coast, everyone got screened.
