Oxygenation guidelines

[nurse2teach]

I am desperately seeking a concise oxygenation policy/protocol/guidelines for nurses to use in NICU. I am not having much help from the neonatologists with narrowing this down. The research I have gotten seems to be all over and somewhat confusing for staff to implement. I would like to keep it simple and practical if possible but am in need of help. Anything you can share or suggestions would be appreciated?

[jwendt]

Does anyone use NANN's guidelines on oxygenation?? Just curious.

[dawnebeth]

(NJNICUCCRN)We dont "chase" babies esp if they are labile. However, we do first silence the high sat alarm and standby...if the sat does stay high, we will tweak the baby down. I think we respond quicker to high sats rather than low ones esp in labile babies.

Same in our unit--it's fine if the babies are sitting at 83 for a short while, or even dip to 78 as long as they come back to 85 or so in under a minute. Chasing is very bad on the lungs. That took a lot of getting used to, though.

One of my primaries was one of the first babies we kept in lower sats, five years ago and every nurse in the room would yell, "Dawn, your baby's satting 82!" Which turned out to be fine for that kid who had very malformed lungs. He probably lived a lot longer than expected because we gave him viagra for the PHT and kept his sats on the low side.