Preventing pediatric disability

[PerfectlyPlump]

Now that I am involved with pediatric private duty nurisng, I am seeing children suffering needlessly.

How (in what types of nurse positions) can nurses get to young people and educate them about the things that cause birth defects, especially drug use/abuse, during pregnancy??

I would be quite willing to even volunteer to help get the word out.

[tralalaRN]

Oh boy - this is a tough case! Emotionally challenging for sure.

I had a similar case awhile ago - baby born with multiple anomalies, vent dependent, pretty much paralyzed, joint displacements. Parents were talked to by several people in clinic about terminating support, but they couldn't do it. (Life support should have been terminated in the NICU.) All of us nurses thought that she'd eventually get some raging infection that would take her, but she's still going at over a couple of years old right now. They too, celebrate things like being off the vent for an hour. .ok - that's great and all, but my though is, would YOU want to live like this? I sure wouldn't. Then there is the cost - the COST - 24/7 in-home RN care pretty much, zillions of clinic appointments, and then - the thing that made me really distance myself - mom wanted baby to have a surgery - to lengthen heel cords - really? She cannot move except for some really minor kicks - doesn't roll even at over 2 years old and you want to put her through this surgery? What kind of MD even suggests this for a child in this condition? It is just really something to see how medical "care" operates sometimes. I know parents often are looked as being in denial (and often are), but boy, oh boy, sometimes I shake my head at medical people who push for some of these things when it's going to make absolutely no difference in this child's level of functioning.

But, I think the way neonatal is practiced in this country is the area of medicine in greatest denial of all. They really celebrate their success, and don't show the other side.

Best to you -