(Postpartum) Are babies counted in your census?

[wife&mommyRN]

Hello Allnurses,

Just wondering if there are any units that include infants in the census. The hospital I'm working @ does not and the newborns charting, assessments, and general care are triple the amount of work as postpartum moms. On top of that there is a greater liability due to the fact that we do not have a nursery and we have to worry about moms dropping the infants @ night. The nurse:pt ratio can go as high as 1:8 (I've heard of higher), not including the babies. Just wondering if most unit operated in this fashion.

Thanks in Advance

[rn/writer, RN]

That's unfortunate, but I don't imagine better staffing ratios would prevent that from happening. Whether you have 3 couplets or 6 couplets, you are still going to have mothers who room in with their infants (as they should).

What were the circumstances in those incidents?

It may still happen, but it's far less likely to occur if you have enough staff to provide for a well-baby nursery.

You can spend enough time with your moms to make sure they are really awake when breastfeeding. You can come back to the room in fifteen minutes instead of an hour to check on the couplet. You can urge the truly exhausted/medicated moms to let you take the baby between feedings and bring it out on demand.

The chances of something bad happening when you have sixteen patients (half of whom aren't provided for in the staffing!) go up astronomically compared to the risk with six patients.

[wife&mommyRN]

Please keep the comments and the information coming, in the beginning I just thought I was being over protective of my babies and my new license :) because it appears the nurses have grown accustomed to the work enviornment. It's glad to hear that I am not delusional, but I stand alone in speaking up about the safety of the patients

rn/ writer I'm sending u a PM :)

[becmanson]

Hi All,

I am in Australia and although our babies have separate MRN they are not counted in the patient staff ratios. With the workload increasing with extra monitoring of a lot of babies our hospital is trying to change this but I am trying to get information about other hospitals that do already include babies and how they went about getting this to happen. We currently have ratio 1 midwife to 5 women during the day (and that means at least 5 babies not counting twins) and one midwife to 6 overnight (plus 6 babies). In theory you could be looking after 10-12 if you include both

Please message back if anyone can help

[becmanson]

what hospital are you from