How common is the Nursery Nurse (vs. mother/baby) care?

Specialties Ob/Gyn

Published

I am a new nursery nurse in a smallish hospital. At this hospital, a nursery nurse is to attend each delivery to take the baby from the OB while the L&D nurse tends to the mom. If it is a C-section (or vacuum or forceps or meconium, etc.) delivery, there will be a neonatologist along for the first few minutes, at least.

Just curious about whether it is more common in most hospitals to do couplet care on Post Partum, and have the L&D nurses take the baby while in that area - rather than what this place does?

Babies generally return at night to the nursery except for feeds if breastfeeding. Doesn't seem to be any rooming in emphasized here, but I guess there wouldn't be without couplet care.

I'm still nervous about going to deliveries but it's only been about 4 solos so far, and I'm being told that it's normal to still be anxious. Hope so.

fergus51

6,620 Posts

We have couplet care, but also have a nursery where most of the babies seem to go for the night. Our nursery nurses don't go to deliveries. The L&D nurses handle that, or the NICU if it's any sort of high risk situation.

Krojas21

22 Posts

I work in a highrisk family birth center (FBC) that is seperate from L&D and our hospital has a NICU. We have variety of different RN jobs (ie Nursery lead, Transistion, Mother/baby nurses, and antepartum nurses). I'm new so I only do mother/baby right now, but I hope to train into transistion, tehn lead nursery and someday antepartum also. L&D is seperate so that would be many years down the road for me since I want to be trained in everything on the family birth side first.

Our lead nursery nurse may take a load of babies with problems or requiring interventions (temp instability, IV meds, bililight babies, sepsis, drug withdrawl babies, comfort care only babies...ect.) or help out with newly born infants when the arrive on our side

Tansistion nurse attends deliveries in l&D and cares for baby only then when mom and baby are transfered to our side (FBC) then continue to care for baby until baby is past transition then the postpartum nurses takes over for baby in addition to mom. If there are no babies being delivered then the transistion nurses takes a load of babies or helps out in thte nursery. If there are any risk factors in L&D a NICU nurse attends the delivery instead of our transistion nurse.

L&D nurses (on the other side) only take care of mom and fetus, until stable (about 1-2 hours).

Antepartum nurses take care of moms and fetuses in utero, and may also take on mothers and babies.

Floor nurses take care of a mixture of patients- moms only (baby in NICU), moms and babies (couplets), and gyn patients.

I work nights so our nursery can care for babies in the nursery, we promote rooming in but our population of patients (innercity) usually send babies to the nursery at night at least for a few hours. During the day babies are only in the nursery for interventions or occassional assessments, weights ect. We encourage moms to care for their baby during the day not make us feed and change and care for baby in the nursery.

I love working with all patients so I think it's great to be able to do it all.

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