Couplet Care

[lcl0204]

Our hospital has recently decided to switch from couplet care to traditional post partum care. I am wondering how other hospitals in OK handle this. Do you have certain nurses who take moms and some that take babies? If so, do you have 2 nurses going in and out of the pt's room all the time? And do the pt's have any complaints about not knowing which nurse to ask questions to? And do you keep a nurse in the nursery? We typically have 8-10 deliveries per night and normally have 4-5 couplets each. Thanks so much, any info is great!

[everthesame, LPN, LVN]

I am not from OK but I used to work on a pp unit. Our unit went from pp to couplet care. I do believe the moms sometimes were confused about who was their nurse and who was the baby's nurse. Also, oftentimes mom's nurse didn't know what was going on with baby and baby's nurse didn't know what was going on with mom. Another drawback seemed to be that you were often having to work around the other nurse to get your assessments, treatments or teaching done. I think it is easier on mom to have just one nurse caring for mom and baby...not as many people in and out of the room and no trying to remember who is mom's nurse and who is baby's nurse.

I don't want to seem negative to post partum nursing. I actually enjoyed it but it is more traffic in and out of mom's room. It helps if you can coordinate with the nursery to get everything done at once with mom and baby so that you can keep the trips into the room to a minimum.

BTW, we always had a nurse in the nursery and our staffing was usually around 8 or 9 moms or babies per nurse.