Breast Milk Verification

[CHBRRT]

I am a Respiratory Therapist in a Boston NICU. Our NICU wanted to start utilizing RT's to verify breast milk prior to being administered to the patients. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.

Is it within a Respiratory Therapist's scope of practice to do?

What if something went wrong and the RT signed off on the milk? Would the law support the RT?

Is it not the same as verifying blood?

Thoughts?

[walkingrock, ADN]

OMG! This is a first for me...RT's to verify EBM, we use 2 RN's.

[CHBRRT]

Yes we do as well; however, they threw this idea out there. Which was not recieved very well.

[labordude, BSN, RN]

I am a Respiratory Therapist in a Boston NICU. Our NICU wanted to start utilizing RT’s to verify breast milk prior to being administered to the patients. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.

Is it within a Respiratory Therapist’s scope of practice to do?

What if something went wrong and the RT signed off on the milk? Would the law support the RT?

Is it not the same as verifying blood?

Thoughts?

Your question is interesting because in my current NICU and in others I have worked, two people (RN + RN/RT/NP/MD/NA/Parent) verified that the milk from the container to the bottle matches the right baby. As far as I know, blood is truly a regulated substance and breastmilk is checked twice as a standard rather than any legal regulation. There is no assessment required in verification of name matching, therefore any scope of practice questions shouldn't have to enter into an equation. There is no special training required in the pre-feeding process that would eliminate others from verifying it unless the hospital itself has a policy stating that they can not. Two of my prior NICUs had both people, initial on a breastmilk log or on the flowsheet to show who checked it. We used the mother/father many times when the patients were in private rooms.

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

I'm familiar with units where the P&P's allow one RN and one RT to verify EBM or blood products. In practice though, after working shifts in nine units over five years, I've never actually seen anyone other than an RN verifying EBM or blood.

[Love_2_Learn]

We used to have 2 RNs check it together but we recently were able to have our computer department figure out a way to let us be able to print out breast milk labels which have the same bar code as their birth ID bands have. Mom's write the date and time collected on the peel-off labels and place one on each bottle. When time comes to give the baby it's milk, we scan the bottle and the baby's armband in our computer to be sure they match. Viola! If for some reason the bottle's bar code won't scan, we check it with another RN and can place another bar code label on the bottle. If we draw some milk from a bottle into a syringe we place a bar code label on the syringe but have another RN double check that we are taking it out of a bottle with the same bar code name as the one we are placing on the syringe. Our Medela milk warmer is waterless so it does not smear the bar codes like our other milk warmer did. Many times we don't need to have another RN double check with us because the bar codes do great. I think having an RT or anyone other than another RN could make things more confusing for everyone...

[NeoNurseTX, RN]

We usuallly do 2 RNs or the parents if they're at the bedside. I don't see why an RT couldn't. It's not that hard to compare a label to a ID band.

[BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN]

We have it written into our policy who can verify EBM with nurses. As long as it is in there, you are covered.