Parent education

[NICUnrs07]

I'm on a committee in my unit that is working on parent education and I'm wondering how do u teach or provide info to parents? Currently we have a folder with hospital/ unit info inside, a small booklet with general info about common diagnoses, staff, policies etc. Inside.

We are thinking of making binders for each bedside (20) with all teaching topics related to nicu patients so that parents can read while visiting. Do any of you use this method? For those that use binders what are the pros and cons, are they utilized, what would you change? Our other idea is a small booklet and a file shelf with info near the hand wash station.

So what works, what doesn't and any different suggestions? Thanks!

[BittyBabyGrower, MSN, RN]

We are in the process of revamping our parent book, but it is a hard binder that has info in it. We have our parent letter that goes over visitation, general hospital rules (ie have to stop at info desk to get visitor sticker, etc), cafeteria hours, parking (where and fee, how much discounted ticket is), alternate transportation, that sort of thing. We also have a McDonald area available to families and that info is in there too.

We have basic baby care (we get booklets from various vendors), breastfeeding and formula info, important phone numbers, info on each gestational age at birth (ie 24 weekers skin, how touch sometimes isn't a good thing, etc), we have a lot of development info in there that we add as appropriate. We have med teaching sheets from our pharmacy, different conditions (ie RDS, GER, BPD, ROP, IVH, PVL,etc) info sheets we add as needed. Then there is the usual sheets on hospital equipement, kangaroo pumps, kangaroo care, oxygen, monitors both inhouse and homegoing, CPR, etc. We add those as needed also. We have all these sheets on our homedrives on our room computers and we print them as needed. It is still a process in work as we are updating and trying to modify the stuff the hospital has, which frankly sucks and has wrong info in it! It is one of those programs the hospital purchases, and it is bad!

We also add blank calendar pages in there so parents can write things on them. We aren't allowed to take pictures anymore, but that used to be fun to do...darn HIPAA!

We have pages on our attendings and fellow also that we add monthly.

But as with anything, you have parents that love it and others that could care less and never look at it. We also send them to a basic baby class put on by our childbirth educators and they sign off a sheet so we can go in the computer and check off the teaching. A lot of people like that better than sitting there listening to us drone on lol

[spacey]

We currently have a discharge class....not mandatory but we have about 90+% attendance. If families don't attend, they have to have the info reviewed with them at the bedside....not as productive or as entertaining. :) I'd love to hear more about what other units use to educate families....that's sort of my passion. :)