NICU Nurses I need some help please

[settingsail]

I am in an RN to BSN program and set to graduate in December and will be back to travel nursing in January. I'm an ER nurse but did my school practicum in the Neonatal ICU. I have a unit assignment due this week. The assignment is to collaborate online with a nursing colleague in another region about a current issue within my practicum area. The issue I have chosen is discuss is multiples sharing beds or at least being placed in incubators next to each other. Where I did my practicum, we had twins and even quads in different rooms and not even side by side. I felt like this was very hard on the parents as some even timed how long they spent with each child so no baby got more time then the other. When I asked why the children were not together, they said it would be too hard for the staff to get more then one admission to a room at the same time. In addition, it would be hard to care for two such high acuity patients and they would rather staff one nurse with a high acuity and a medium acuity patient. My question to you is how have things be done at the facilities you work at? Are they always placed in separate beds side by side, do you co-bed, or are they in separate rooms? Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

[prmenrs, RN]

Here's a previous thread about co-bedding I found by "searching" (3rd button to the right up there). There are some more threads, but this should help.

You can do the search again for more info. I'm not currently in a setting that does it.

https://allnurses.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15392

[NICURN9]

Wow! How unfair for those parents. Nothing like adding to their stress. Our multiples are always in the same room unless one of them get an infectious disease and needs to be isolated or something similar. They are not neccessarily side-by-side but most of the time they are....just depends on acuity and ability to move other patients around (ie...not going to move a 650gm kid on an oscillator just so twins can be next to each other).

We do not co-bed. We were co-bedding them a few years ago but now we are not. I am PRN and I don't really remember the reason that we quit.

Hope that helps

[iceNICUnurse]

In my NICU we try as hard as we can to keep twins in the same room. Sometimes not side by side but then opposite to each other.

We do not Co bed...to hard for our very old neonatologists to handle.

We also try to send twins home at the same time and sometimes one twin is ready to go home but stays a few days (or weeks) while the other one is getting redy to go as well.

[kitty29]

We also try to keep mutiples in the same room and when they are stable in the same crib....the most has been 4....but now we have computerized charting so the most we might ever be able to do in a crib is 3.

It really makes a difference for the family.

[TiffyRN, BSN, PhD]

We do generally admit in the same room so most of the time multiples start out in the same room though maybe not side by side. We try to move them together and usually by the time they are less encumbered by lines and such we will co-bed them. We have placed them together in an isolette but it doesn't usually work real well due to lack of room (only our largest isolettes will fit more than one infant comfortably) and temp differences. I really like having the multiples co-bedded but there are a few small issues. The ones I have had always stay quite warm and usually need little cover other than a lightly tucked blanket over both. Also, I had a set of triplets once that were quite irritable and they were constantly waking each other up, they rarely slept more than an hour at a time.

[settingsail]

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to post!!!!!! I really appreciate it. :)