Parent CPR Teaching

Specialties PICU

Published

This question came up recently in my unit. If you are discharging a complex kiddo from ICU to home (trach/vent dependent for instance) who teaches the parents CPR? In the NICU I worked in (same hospital) we taught EVERY parent CPR prior to discharge regardless of diagnosis/complexity. We were told that nurses could teach them since we weren't "certifying" them just teaching them how to keep their baby alive until EMS arrived. We rarely discharge from the cicu and the nurse this past week was very concerned that she had the task to teach a complex patients parents CPR, she didn't feel it was her place and made quite a stink about it even going as far as to say she didn't want the parents to sue her if they did something wrong and said "well this is how the nurse told us to do it".

Thoughts? How does your unit do it?

Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

We have a video they watch and then urge them to be certified. We don't show them anything or do a return demo.

Specializes in pediatrics, PICU.

in our facility we have the outside home care nurse agency come to teach parents, and they are always reminded and encouraged to take an actual certification class through whoever they want as long as its from the AHA

Specializes in PICU, Sedation/Radiology, PACU.

Our hospital regularly has certification classes for CPR and parents of fragile kiddos attend for free. If there's no class scheduled and the need for certification is imminent, one of the hospital's CPR instructors will do a private teaching session for the parents. It's set up by the case manager and the patient cannot be discharged until the parents are certified.

Specializes in Pedi.

When I worked in the hospital, we had a parent CPR program and when we did the admission assessment, there was a question if CPR teaching would be needed. If we clicked yes, it sent an automatic referral to that program and they came up and brought a video. It wasn't true CPR certification, just basic teaching.

Hmm interesting, so it doesn't seem like bedside nurses do it very commonly, good to know, thanks!

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