Emergency Equipment (Couplet Care)

[RNmommy]

If you do rooming in couplet care, what kind of emergency equipment do you have available at the bedside? I just relocated and have only spent one day on my new unit. So I go into the first room and start scanning the environment to find (shockingly to me) only an O2 flowmeter attached to the wall. No O2 tubing, no baby bag and mask, no ambubag, no wall suction, no yankauer, no 8F or 10F suction tubing!! So I ask my preceptor what do they do if they need to give the baby blow by. She says they call the neo team or take the baby to the well baby nursery to administer. OOOOOKKKAAAYYY, sooooooooooooooo what about discovering a PPH. I mean there are so many things that can happen where O2 would be one of your first actions. I could barely sleep that night thinking about discussing this with the manager and/or educator. I don't want to come across as the hot head RN from CA but I just can't feel that unsafe in my practice.

So, I'm wondering, is this common practice or would you freak out too?

[RNBelle]

We don't stock anything in the PP rooms. I got one even better - No suction available in many of our med surg rooms. Sucks when someone is coding.

[cherokeesummer]

The poster is talking about couplet care, not L&D. In my facility we do NOT have any emergency equipment in the couplet care rooms. We have a fully equiped crash cart that is 2 long hallways away. The crash cart is checked every shift. The only time we have emergency equipment at bedside is if the patient is expected to have problems. i.e. PIH on MGS04 If the baby is anything but completely stable it will stay in the nursery for observation. We attempted several times to equip each room with the bare basics such as o2 flow meter on the wall.......but our equipment always seems to grow legs and walk out of the room! The "clients and or family members" seem to feel that EVERYTHING in the patients room is for them to keep! Much of our unit budget is spent on "replacing" phones, tv's (which somehow become unbolted from the wall), clocks (which we have even tried to bolt to the ceiling), bed linen, computers (which were supposed to help the nurses and donated by the hospital auxillary) and even the infant baby beds. The only way we can KNOW that we have the emergency equipment at hand is to keep it in one place away from the publics hands. Has this led to near disasters/delayed recucisitation........ Does anyone have any ideas on how to remedy this problem?

Exactly what you said - ditto...

Sounds like we work in the same place haha!

[cherokeesummer]

PS - someone has even stole boxes of gloves...sheesh!