Duties of OB nurses (and others) Please feel free to add!

Specialties Ob/Gyn

Published

For the benefit of new nurses and future/prospective OB/GYN nurses and doulas, midwives, others, thought I would try a sticky that discusses various duties/skills sets and other characteristics that make a "good", well-rounded OB nurse, doula, midwife or other professional dealing with Women's Health Issues. This question seems to come up now and again, so let's help em out.

I will start. Here are skills sets for OB nurses that I found apply in most areas. Again feel free to add to this; I want to learn as well!

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OBSTETRICAL ASSESSMENT SKILLS

Inbound facility tranfer unit

Outbound transfer to other facility

Identify fetal position (Leopold maneuvers)

Fetal heart tones

Severity of contractions

lady partsl exam, dilitation & effacement

lady partsl exam, station & presentation

lady partsl exam, culture collection

CLINICAL SKILLS

Set up tocotransducer

Intrauterine pressure catheter

Auscultate fetal heart tones

Intact/nonintact membranes

Nitrazine test

Internal fetal monitor

Interpreting normal/abnormal fetal heart patterns

Baseline interpretation

Early decelerations

Beat to beat variability

Late decelerations

Prolonged decelerations

Set up OB pack

Set up baby pack

Cord blood collection

Artificial rupture of membranes

COMPLICATIONS/FURTHER DUTIES

Pregnancy Induced Hypertension

Antihypertensives

Clonus

Diabetes

Abruptio placenta

Placenta previa

Prolapsed cord

Preeclampsia

Eclampsia

Malpresentation

Premature rupture of the membranes

Premature labor

Magnesium sulfate

Drug dependent

RH incompatibility

Herpes

HIV

HBV

Hemorrhage

Blood transfusion

Forceps delivery

Vacuum extraction

Precipitous delivery

Gestational Diabetes/Diabetes and its sequalae

Starting IV's

Cesarean section-circulate

Cesarean section-scrub

Central line placement, set up & assist

Epidural, set up & assist

Spinal, set up & assist

Local, set up & assist

Foley catheter placement

Pain control, narcotic

Intrathecal medication delivery

Episiotomy, set up & assist

Uterine massage

Lochia assessment

DVT

Induction of labor

Cytotec

Prostaglandin supp

Oxytocin infusion

PATIENT TEACHING

Relaxation/breathing techniques

Premature labor prevention

Phone triage

Also:

Labor coaching/support for birthing mother/family

Neonatal assessment/resuscitation as needed

Breastfeeding initiation/support/ongoing teaching

Self-care and baby care once you go home

Care of any surgical wounds/therapies

After-care telephone triage (answering questions once a new family has gone home)

Specializes in OBSTERTICS-POSTPARTUM,L/D AND HIGH-RISK.

Dear mamababynurse, I am so sorry that you have had such a bad experience in OB nursing. It is really a wonderful place to work in the right situation. We all do have busy, busy days.I have had every type of OB patient. I've never had a GYN patient. I now work on the antepartum unit that you don't like. We take antepartum patients at any stage of their pregnancy. This becomes an issue when the beds are nearly full and one of our MDs wants to send in , lets say, 10 gestational age for a non-pregnancy dx. We try to get them moved to a medical floor so that we will have a bed for a fetus that needs monitoring. But sometimes that's difficult to get the MD to understand. Like HappyNurse said if it can happen to women, it can happen to pregnant women. So we see the whole spectrum of dx's. I wish for you to be able to get into a hospital where you could do mother-baby nursing. But remember that these pregnant women that we are taking care of will someday deliver and then their issues will become yours.

I also wanted to know how you were able to put a mom on the monitor without training. Everyone in our antepartum and L/D has to take basic fetal monitoring, then advance fetal monitoring and then do 4 hr of CEU,s of fetal monitoring every year.

Maybe you should think of going somewhere that you would enjoy nursing. :heartbeat :nurse:

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DEB1

I too hope to find the right place for me. I know it is out there somewhere. Opportunities are very limited where I live. I have thought of travel nursing, but I have two young children I don't want to leave. I can go back to nights, but really dislike that idea. It's just unfortunate for me that I was sold a bad bill of goods. I was told I would be orienting to the nursery, I was told "the secretary is on maternity leave" (there is NO secretary), I was told I "might" have a "few" gyn patients, but, "don't worry, they're all straightforward, stable cases. Nothing complicated." I'd only had maybe two gyn patients before coming to this hospital, and with the hope of landing in the nursery sometime in the future, I took the bait. I thought "sure, I can deal with this". I've been there over a year now and have NEVER set foot in the OR (for Csections), NEVER been oriented to the nursery, and the only gyn patients I seem to get are the ones with MULTIPLE issues.

I realize that today's antepartum with problems is tomorrow's mama who may continue to have problems. I am perfectly comfortable with that, that is what I have been trained to do, that's all I've ever wanted to do. That and transition nursing. That, above all, is my favorite. I was never happier than when I was the one catching the babies, good or bad. There's nothing like it. But again, the opportunity to do that in my area is nonexistent, unless I go back to nights. So, this is the dilemma I struggle with on a daily basis.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, please let me know. Right now I seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I watched a labor nurse and learned how to hook the patient up to the monitor. I am in the process of doing just the basic fetal monitoring course, since it seems I will continue to get antepartum patients. :o

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In looking over the duties I see C-Section scrub & circulate. I would love to hear some conversation about where this training comes from and how that works in your institution. Thanks. I am a perioperative RN and have been precepting the OB nurses in our hospital. ;)

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Specializes in Pediatric, Obstetrics, Public Health.

We Translate!!!!

I'm in TX! ;)

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:balloons:For those who do scrub and circulate, where did you get your training? Do you have an operating room inside your department? thanks

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I have a few duties to add:

Waitress for family members

Housekeeper

Answering service (Dr Bigtime:"Call Dr Blowhard , and tell him I said...") (Dr Blowhard:"Let Dr Bigtime know that..."):uhoh3:

Data entry

I'm sure there are more...

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Specializes in L&D, NICU, PICU, School, Home care.

Whew, no wonder I am tired at the end of my shift!!!

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Wow, we do alot. Impressive list Deb.

We don't circulate or scrub though. We are the baby nurse however.

steph

we circulate, scrub and do newborn care. as well as do all the ward clerk duties, do our own peri care and transfer our patients (cuz it's easier than hearing the techs tut and whine because you ask) and stock the rooms on the rare night that it's not crazy busy.

not to mention how we have to baby the husbands/fathers/over bearing mommy of the expectant mothers.

and have to keep a straight face when we see a male who is either the laboring woman's father/brother/inlaw/cousin and sometimes teenage son staring into the lady parts during birth. it's definitely strange.

gotta love it.

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We Translate!!!!

I'm in TX! ;)

i forgot translator. i'm in brooklyn ny. we got them all.

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In looking over the duties I see C-Section scrub & circulate. I would love to hear some conversation about where this training comes from and how that works in your institution. Thanks. I am a perioperative RN and have been precepting the OB nurses in our hospital. ;)

we get scrub and circulate orientation when sign on. did two weeks just scrubbing. the nurse educator who worked for many years on l & d did mine. talk about hell.

my facility has 3 ors on labor and delivery and we better well damn know how to scrub in an emergency and the tech is off or on vacation or even on break.

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Specializes in L&D.
Ok - OB nurses everywhere-

Are you ACLS certified?

Are you doing cardiac arrythmia monitoring on all post-op patients?

All L&D nurses are ACLS certified, because we circulate surgeries and do postop care.

All surgical patients in L&D, be they Csections or cerclages, are on EKG monitors for a minimum of one hour postop.

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Specializes in L&D, NICU, PICU, School, Home care.

I work in a small (5 LDRP) unit in rural NY. We have an OR on the unit but at this point do not scrub or circulate officially. We also do NOT have 24/7 anesthesia or OR crew in house. At night we may need to circulate until the OR nurse arrives in the case of a STAT C-Section. The new thing is they think we should learn to do both OR jobs so we can do all of the C/S. A little hard when we only have 3 nurses per shift. One scrub + one circulator + baby nurse = nobody left ont the floor for the other patients. We don't know how they plan to do this so it should be interesting!!! :idea:

You can also add housekeeper to the list of duties. After the regular housekeepers go home we have to strip and clean any discharge rooms or clean them when we are playing muscial beds to open a labor bed for a patient. (2 of our rooms can be doubled for post partum patients). :uhoh3:

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