Checking for breakdown of nares

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Specializes in NICU.

Our CNM's want us to use an otoscope q shift to look inside our babes noses to check for breakdown. I wouldn't have a problem with this except that we have ONE (!) for a 40 bed unit and probably 2/3 of the kids ore on NCPAP. The unit "swallows" things very quickly and I'm sure the thing will last all of ten minutes before it's MIA. The other thing is that a lot of these babies don't tolerate having the CPAP off for anymore that very brief periods. I'm no otoscope expert and it might take me a while to assess my babies' nares (because they are oh so cooperative:uhoh3: ) They have disposable nose cones but still seems like a big infection risk.

I dunno. We keep getting more stuff like this. More check offs, more forms, more pages in the IPOC. I had an "easy" two baby assignment today and I just squeaked in getting all the charting/paperwork done! All the co-signing!!!

Sorry, this turned into an unintentional vent.

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It's ok to vent. Sounds a little unreasonable to me.

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Specializes in NICU- now learning OR!.

I would be curious as to the rationale for such a thing....seems like a waste of time. (Like you said...the babies would be oh-so-helpful!)

It is important to check and document breakdown or no breakdown q shift...I just can't believe an otoscope is the way to go. (why do you need to stick yet another thing in these poor babies noses?)

Jenny

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