Bachelor thesis; Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

[tineb]

Hi! I am doing research for my bachelor thesis, and I have been planning on writing my paper on NAS for a long time. I want to specialise in neonatal care/intensive care later on, and I find this topic very interesting.

My only problem is that I'm not sure what kind of thesis I would want, so I'm asking you pro's for help! You all have different experiences from these (poor) babies, and it would be nice to see what you see as important while dealing with them.

I want to learn more about how the drugs affect the baby while withdrawing, and how it affects their growth. I think I should limit myself to babies carried by mothers on Subutex or Methadone, possibly Heroine.

Do any of you have any ideas for thesis questions?

Thanks!

Norwegian nursing student, Tine

[cayenne06, MSN, CNM]

I do a TON of work with moms on MMT, moms who are actively abusing, and incarcerated moms.

What direction did you want to take your thesis in? Patient education? Nursing interventions? Improving outcomes? NAS is a huuuuge topic. I think the psychosocial component is the most interesting. What kind of preconceived notions do nurses have about the parents of NAS babies? How do our prejudices affect the care we give these families? What can we do to improve outcomes for these families and support the formation of a strong family bond?

[cayenne06, MSN, CNM]

As an aside, I recently came across my first IP patient with a medical marijuana card. The nurses insisted on doing finnigan scoring on the kid after birth, and she got all sorts of conflicting advice about breastfeeding.

[fifita2010]

Hi, I have been doing NICU for a long time. What interests me and very little research has been done is the combined care of NAS babies and their mothers.

At a very vulnerable time we separate the couplet. It has all kinds of consequences that as nurses we may not acknowledge. There are a few things in the literature about combined care and in BC, Canada there is the FIR (Families in Recovery)Institute that is doing some ground breaking research on this subject, but not enough data to support combined care units from a length of stay or cost perspective.

Do something interesting for your paper.

My other suggestion would be withdrawal from antidepressants. We see a lot of this now and most nurses do not consider this when a "normal" infant is acting weird. We need to educate the mothers on this.

One other thing would be subutex withdrawal during the 3rd trimester. We have a doc at my hospital that does this with great results. I am working with him to publish his results as hardly anything on this is mentioned in the literature. Good luck!!!