tntblonde

In our hospital it used to be a practice to have 5 years med/surg experience before allowing anyone to work in any speciliaty area. A few years ago that changed and we started orienting new grads to our post partum unit..some did well,some not... what they all missed out on was gaining experience assessing patients with other issues. As we all know sometimes our patients have more then just having babies going on! they sometimes fail to see the "BIG PICTURE" We continue in our hospital not to orient new grads to L&D..whatever happens with you, be open to learning everything you can and don't give up on your dream of being an L&D nurse. however be open to other ideas in school you may surprise yourself what areas of nursing your interested in!

I am not orienting to the birth center...lol... I'm the preceptor! I have worked in l&d for 15 plus years and postpartum for the 5 years before that, being in nursing for 25 years total..I agree orientation the longer the better. We currently orient nurses for 16 weeks on a full time basis... now here is the part I don't agree with. .. we then take these trained nurses (almost all of whom have nursed postpartum at least 2 -5 years.) then give them 1, 12 hour shift in L&D every 2 weeks. We only have around 500 deliveries a year so they could go weeks without a delivery..I say train them when a position becomes available ... let them work in that position and gain the experience thats what takes time...were looking at our orientation program and the Drs arent too happy with the fact that they are sometimes working with inexperienced nurses, I say the length of time we orient isnt maybe the main issue... what do you all think?

I was just looking for some information. How long do most nurses have to orient to labor and delivery? Our unit orients birth center nurses for 6 months with a preceptor, then they are considered as staff always working with a more experienced labor nurse. This is mostly nurses that have been previously working not new grads. Our chief of staff( MD) thinks that it should be longer... which financially is crazy.. he doesnt feel as though these nurses should be counted as staff for at least a year! Most of the nurses that have oriented recentlly have been in nursing for at leat 10 years..they are certainly not new nurses... I'm just curious how long do other centers do???

I agree with all, first off lay patient flat as possible and ask her to lift her hips up, like a pelvic thrust exercise... but basically if the cervix is that posterior the dilation makes little difference, that baby isnt going to fall out! and why put the patient through unnecessary discomfort!

Our unit has about 500 deliveries a year. We staff L&D with two RN's, we are not a locked unit, we do not have an aide or secretary. We have a postpartum unit that is not attached to our unit and it also holds pedi pt. and takes any med/surg overflow that is appropriate, if needed. We always have 2 labor nurses in house, if we have no patients we float to postpartum/pedi. If the house is busy we have an option of floating, if we want and we are paid extra to float! (union contract!) but our manager would NEVER leave one nurse on the floor alone,your manager is asking for trouble!!! Most of the time we dont even get off the floor for lunch,if we have an active labor patient we don't leave unless someone from postpartum can take our place, if no one is labor and delivery trained we don't leave!.. Im sure your QI person might have something to say about the safety of it..maybe you should check with them???

we have 500 deliveries a year, OB oncall must be within 20 min. of hospital unless we are running pit anesthesia also on call, we have a new anesthesia group at our hospital they are much more ready to come in and they do our epidurals for us,which prior to them coming we did not have... we love them!:1luvu:

sorry this was my first post and duhhh didn't realize there were previous discussions... after reading through them... this sounds like a pretty old practice! we use pit, cervidil and cytotec. mostly just plain old pit, and not low dose!..

I have not seen any info from awhonn regarding numbers of couplets, I find it unusual that your email made that statement as awhonn doesnt usually attach numbers like that to their guidelines it seems to me that five couplets and a large assignment and not much teaching or quality care could be given... I however am somewhat spoiled. Our hospital uses 3 couplets as a full assignment on the day shift,4 at night and mag patients are a one on one..!

someone tell me exactly what a foley ripening is, we don't do them at our facility

we get the up as soon as they have sensation and the ability to move there own legs generally pretty quickly after delivery within an hour or two.