Preterm Infants in NICU Recovery Rates By Race?

[crbetts]

I am a last semester ADN student doing my clinicals in Maternal Child Health. Today, I was able to observe in a NICU. The RN that I was observing said that it had been her overwhelming experience that an African-American female premmie would grow better and get stronger and have a better recovery from the NICU out of all races and genders. She then said that the AA males and Caucasian females were kind of middle tier in their recoveries, and that Caucasian males recovery rates were much lower. She said that there was a marked difference. I though that was really interesting, and I thought that there must be some literature to back that up if true, but I can't find anything.

What is your experience? Is there a difference for races and/or genders in NICU recovery rates? I'm just really curious about this now.

Thanks.

[amandap213]

That's why they call them wimpy white boys. African americans to better, females better than men

[umcRN, BSN, RN]

you should probably try this in the NICU forum, but anyways, I only have 2 years NICU experience but so far I think I can say that is pretty accurate. We had african american twins once, boy and girl. Girl was delivered into the toilet, boy was not, girl was outa the NICU months ahead of her brother. We also frequently have more "chronic" AA girls than any other race/gender, they tough it out a lot longer and end up going home when everyone said they wouldnt.