Patient types on postpartum units

[KKRJJ]

We have a 17 bed postpartum unit where we take low risk antepartum, postpartum, well baby and gyn patients. We often back up into Labor and Delivery. A proposal has been made to include medical surgical patients to include male patients. I am trying to find standards/ethical considerations/ or other reasons why care of adult male patients on postpartum would not be the right thing to do. I have queried AWHONN and am actively searching for articles related to this.

[Nunya, BSN]

On 7/13/2019 at 8:18 PM, klone said:

The recommendation is that OB/mom/baby should be a "clean" unit. As such, it precludes a lot of med/surg patients. You would essentially need to have TWO med/surg units - one for "clean" patients, and another for patients that have an infectious condition. It does not make sense, fiscally. The only time it would make sense is if it's a critical access hospital that only does a handful of deliveries a month, and it's not feasible to have a separate OB unit. Out of curiosity, how many deliveries does your facility do a month?

What about the patients who allegedly come in clean but then they develop or it's discovered they aren't? It's just a bad idea to have MS patients with PP.

On 7/13/2019 at 10:01 PM, klone said:

I'm pretty sure that AWHONN's paper on staffing guidelines does address this issue. When I'm in the office on Monday, I will look it up.

It definitely makes it more challenging to staff appropriately and meet productivity expectations when you don't have a high volume of OB patients.

Does JC say anything about this?