I took care of a patient today who was post op day one still on a PCA. I went in this morning and said hi. We chatted for a minute because her older daughter was the same age as my daughter. Then she asked for her baby from the nursery. I had someone bring her the baby. Then I continued on my rounds.
About 45 minutes later I heard a cry from the hallway. I ran into the room and the patient was hysterically crying holding her baby. She was crying, "They left me alone! Why did they leave me alone?" She said she was sitting in the chair holding the baby when she suddenly dozed off and the baby rolled onto the floor. I grabbed the baby and brought her to the nursery.
The baby was fine but when the patient's husband showed up he was ******. He said, "How could you leave her in the room alone with the baby? She was on morphine. She can't take care of the baby by herself." He made a big stink about it. Supervisors were involved. I was up to my knees in paperwork. Now the nurses are starting to question non-separation. But have you ever had a mother drop her baby on postpartum? Who's ultimately responsible when a postpartum mother drops her baby?
It's definitely a tough one. The only solution I can come up with is that mom needs to have another adult in the room with her at all time. I dunno.
We do not leave babies alone with any mom that is on MAG or that is a fresh Csection. If there is not staff member or visitor in the room then the baby is sent to the NBN until someone is available to care for the baby. There is no strict policy in place regarding this, so therefore every nurse uses their own judgement. This is when great assessment skills comes to play. In the OP case, it is very hard to say if this could have been prevented. If she was fully alert and oriented I may have left her with the baby but it is so hard to say because I wasn't there. I'm sure this will be a good lesson for the staff. Perhaps it was a system failure, it is just hard to say.
Story: 2010 I wsd on postpartum floor. Mom had brand new baby in the room with her. Ex boyfriend comes to visit. 30 minutes later mom is screaming that the ex boyfriend stole the baby. He was already out in the parking lot when he got caught. he went 7 floors down before mom screams the baby was kidnapped. We all thought it was"strange."
maybe he said he just wanted to give the baby a tour of the hallway or get an early start on drivers ed but when he didn't come back within minutes the mom panicked....I mean I don't know that's all I got.
Specializes in Float Pool-Med-Surg, Telemetry, IMCU.
Who are they going to blame when things go wrong at home? Sorry, not an L&D nurse but I just had to chime in. There is something called personal responsibility and this kind of situation really grinds my gears! Also, she is on a PCA- "PATIENT controlled analgesia"; don't push the freaking button if you know you are going to get sleepy while holding your newborn! For God's sake, what has happened to common sense in this country?
If we lived in an alternate reality where appropriate staffing was provided these things would pretty much never happen. Unfortunately we don't live in that world. If a mother has a PCA I wouldn't want to leave her alone with only another non-adult in the room. I don't smell a set up. I see a mother doing it all on her own, scared she might have hurt her baby, and who might have some fear of her husband. He doesn't sound super warm and fuzzy to me, but again maybe he couldn't get time off of work to be there. Family dynamics complicate things, especially if you don't know the details.
Doesn't look like a setup to me, if you followed policy then you should be ok. By the way, what is the policy for patients on opiates and what they can or can't be allowed to do while admitted at your hospital?
Doesn't look like a setup to me, if you followed policy then you should be ok. By the way, what is the policy for patients on opiates and what they can or can't be allowed to do while admitted at your hospital?
I'm not sure. I'm a traveler and this never happened to me when I was staff. I've since made it a point to not let my post op patients be alone with their babies if they're alone but now I have the nursery nurses screaming at me to bring the babies out, even if their mothers are alone and knocked out on morphine. I honestly don't think there is a formal policy and from what I've seen there are no active moves to put one in place, even after the incident.
3 years and I have never ever experience that.. All my post partum mother has their watchers around them 24 hours and they change shifts carrying the baby.. But even without watchers with morphines, breastfeeding and carrying babies have never ever drop their babies.. It is really suspicious... Am working alone sometimes without a nursing aid but never got such experience
She was alone in the room? Or was the older daughter there? I had a c-section earlier this year & if my baby had fallen I would've, of course, jumped to pick him up. But I don't know.. Did she request to have her healing wound checked? I wouldve. But maybe that's a first-time mommy move. I didn't think of anything suspicious going on until I read some of the previous comments.
iPink, BSN, RN
1,414 Posts
14 patients is a lot!...I start thinking about SNFs when I hear about such numbers.
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