Neonatal Stethoscope?

my littman cardiology came with a interchangable pediatric head...just screw the adult one off, screw the pediatric one on (and it is soooo cute).

i really don't think it works any better than the adult size, i have tried both on my 7 week old.

I hate that the acoustics aren't as highly rated on these (when, oh, when will they do something just for us?) but the Littmann neonatal steth has a radius that is smaller than almost any other scope. The difference is astounding, when you're talking about being able to auscultate preemies or IUGR babies, compared to a healthy term baby (less chest area, harder to get a seal with a larger head). I think the Littmann Pedi head is one inch in diameter, and the neonatal is 3/4". This should be a consideration for you. Look at the diameters of a couple of scopes, and then rate them acoustically to pick the best one. I think a Pedi sized scope would be fine for Well-Baby, and possibly even Level II (older, bigger babies).

NICU-tc,

Before you go buy a littman (which I agree are the best) double check with your unit that you can use it. Our unit has a stethoscope for each neonate that stays near them at all times. No outside scopes allowed. Just one more way to protect the little ones. :)

I also work in Level III NICU. Each baby has their own stethescope in our NICU. Is that true for anyone else?

HI NICU-tc!! Good to see you hopped on board for allnurses.com. I told you it is helpful and kind of addicting. Call me and tell me how work is going...Jess

In our unit, every baby has its own stethescope during the NICU stay and upon discharge, the stethescope is cleaned before it is used on the next baby. No outside scopes allowed, even the docs and specialists use the baby's stethescope. We use the littman neonatal scopes.

My NICU does it the same as Teeny's.

When I started NICU, I had to kiss my $$$ Littman Cardiology III ADIOS!!! But anything we can do to prevent cross-contamination in these little ones is worth it!

I work LDRP and in our nursery (regular well baby is the only one we have) each baby has it's own stethescope. No outside ones are allowed.

We all have our own neo or peds scopes and alcohol the headpieces between patients...well most staff does.

For babies who are on contact procautions, we use those blue plastic disposable peds scopes. Once they've been cleared by ID we can take them off procautions and use our own scopes again.

I haven't seen any cross-contamination, to be quite honest. A while back, we did have a scare. ID was really on our butts because 5 kids had the same bug at the same time. We put them all on procautions and isolated them from the rest of the unit. But in the end, microbiology reported that between the 5 kids, there were 4 different strains of the same bug, and the two who had the same strain were twins. So it wasn't the staff passing the bug from baby to baby, it was just their immune systems. The family of the twins had been told time and time again to always wash their hands between babies, but you can only tell people so many times I guess before they stop listening.