ostomy care in the neonate

Sweeper933 · Jan 3, 2008

Are you looking more for nurse or parent info? Whenever we have questions regarding an ostomy on a baby on our unit, we always contact the ostomy nurse for the hospital. She specialized in ostomies, and always has some great tips for us! Does your hospital have somebody like that that you can go to?

nurserynurse55 · Jan 4, 2008

I work in an OB-GYN hospital that does not have one, but one of our sister hospitals is a childrens hospital that does have one. She won't some in on midnights or even walk (connected through an underground tunnel even) over. I am loking more for patient care stuff.

justjenny · Jan 5, 2008

No websites...but Google is always a good resource. In our unit, the care is no different than an adult ostomy (just much smaller)

Ie: good assessment skills of stomas, proper skin care to prevent breakdown, etc.

Strict I&O is important, these little ones can "dump" and run into trouble very quickly!

HTH

Jenny

elizabells, BSN, RN · Jan 7, 2008

We try to get the parents involved in ostomy care as soon as they can bear it. It can be really traumatic for some parents when a baby gets NEC or whatever and needs an ostomy, but it helps them to accept what has happened to their babies. Most of our kids don't go home with their ostomies, but we still try to get the parents involved in the care. You can start out with them cutting patterns for the disks, while you do the hands-on care. Then you can work up to them doing the actual disk/bag changes. Sorry I don't have any solid info, but that's what we do.

BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN · Jan 9, 2008

Why won't this person come over there? If she is consulted then she should be coming. We have teaching sheets from our stoma nurse that include skin care, which entails changing the bag every 2-3 days even if it doens't neet it so that the skin underneath can be checked...sometimes there are little leaks that damage the skin. It also has info on what to look for in case something goes bad with the stoma itself.