Visiting Nurse for Newborns

Specialties Public/Community

Published

  • Specializes in Pediatrics, Community Health, School Health.

If I could describe my "dream job" it would be to visit newly discharged babies and moms. When I delivered my son, my hospital offered me to have an RN do a home visit to do a well-baby check, check my surgical incision and make sure breast feeding was getting off to a good start.

I LOVED mother-baby in school and did a 6 month elective in mother-baby my senior year of nursing school. I also love pediatrics and community medicine. I love teaching and everything related to mother-baby.

So I have done an extensive on-line search and can't seem to find anything like this (I am in MA). I read about programs described for patients, but can't seem to find any agencies that do this. Should I just cold call a home visiting agency? I don;t want to do VNA with "sick" patients, I want to do those home visits with newly-discharged moms and babies.

Any ideas???

Chapsi

12 Posts

I worked in a newborn nursery for 7 years and a very small minority of moms got postpartum home visits from a nurse. It was either the VNA or another similar local home visit agency (depending on the patient's insurance). I know that some of the nurses were also IBCLCs and would do breastfeeding visits with the moms. I don't think they had visiting nurses at the agency that exclusively did mother-baby visits, though. In our area, at least, there isn't an agency just for postpartum visits.

Have you considered private practice or working directly for a pediatric or midwifery practice that would send you to visit their private clients? Home visits are awesome for new families, they just aren't always cost effective, and so it isn't the standard of care, unfortunately.

I have done home visits for families as a lactation consultant and as an assistant for a homebirth midwife, and I LOVE the relaxed pace-- I can focus on ONE mom and baby couplet and address all their concerns in the comfort of their own home without worrying about my other 7 patients like I would in the hospital.

sergel02, BSN

169 Posts

If you still need one, or anyone reading this does, there is the possibility of Nurse Family partnership if your state or county has it. They follow the mother and her newborn from birth to 2 years, and maybe prenatal too.

Guests

Guest

0 Posts

If you still need one, or anyone reading this does, there is the possibility of Nurse Family partnership if your state or county has it. They follow the mother and her newborn from birth to 2 years, and maybe prenatal too.

Unfortunately our state doesn't have that program. It sounds wonderful though.

CindysBrain

10 Posts

Hi there,

This is my job!! I work in CA for my local Public Health Dept. I work for the Maternal, Child & Adolescent Health Program. Our program does home visitation for high risk mothers and families. We see postpartum clients and newborns, antepartum clts, kids for childhood obesity, and children who also have cases with CWS.

The postpartum cases are my favorites by far! You have a perfect opportunity to educate families in their home setting. You are able to assess the home setting, safe sleep environment, breast feeding, access to resources, PPD, and mom and infant wellness. Our goal is to do an initial home visit within 5 days of d/c and a follow up visit within 30 days. We then refer our clients to local agencies based on their needs. If breast feeding is not going well and it is beyond my expertise then we make an appt. to see the LC at our local WIC office. If food is scorifice, then I refer to local agencies to help them with food.

I love my job and the autonomy. I plan my week out as I see fit. I will tell you that the one thing that is the worst part of the job is the documentation. We document in the home, then we do a longer narrative at the office to put into a paper chart. Lots of paper. Then quarterly we document how we spend our time. It's like documenting on the documentation!!

Honestly it is a great job and I get to go home feeling like I have truly helped my community. I would look into your county's local public health dept. and see if such a program exist.

Best of luck to you!

Guests

Guest

0 Posts

That sounds AMAZING!!! Seriously, that is exactly what I want to do with my life. I live in MA and have been researching and haven't found it yet, but I am determined to keep looking.

frances81

50 Posts

It probably depends where you are but in my province PHN's do home visits for newly discharged mom&babe - ideally within 48 hours of discharge. In bigger cities there will be a specialty group of nurses who do this. As a generalist in a smaller town, I do them along with running the rest of the public health centre (well child clinic, adult and travel clinic, flu clinic, opioid outreach, prenatal teaching, cdc, etc).

frances81

50 Posts

Also it's true about the documentation - home visits take forever to document!

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