flyingpenguin92

I'm a RN at a pediatric hospital that deals with a lot of longer term patients that are a bit more stable than most hospital settings. Our kids definitely get assessed for developmental milestones, but most of that assessment is completed by child life specialists, not nursing. Nurses may help in answering questions about if we have seen the kids perform certain tasks that they may not have observed while doing their assessment (rolling over, sitting unassisted, cooing, etc). We also help with making sure that adjustments are accurate since many of our kids are extremely premature and so their age gets corrected. We don't generally use the results of the assessment for any of the nursing tasks, but PT and OT probably do in focusing on what tasks they should be working on. Parents are pretty seldom involved in assessments, because they are not usually at the hospital throughout our kids stay. When parents do have the opportunity to visit, training them in caring for the medical needs of their kid, and letting them enjoy time with their kid definitely take priority over developmental assessments. Developmental assessments are also not completed nearly as often as other assessments, and most of our kids are working towards multiple goals, and making a ton of progress in one area (ie eating, walking, fine motor, etc) may not translate to a higher developmental score so often its easier to track progress in terms of each goal than using multiple factors. Many of our kids also have pretty complex medical conditions, so it's not always safe to hit all of the traditional developmental milestones even if they are making great progress. Sorry that was long and kinda didn't answer all your questions. At least where I work developmental assessments are commonly done, nursing is just not really involved with them.