NANSNURSE

I was just wondering what other units do for footprints. Currently, we are expected to do footprints on everyone when they are admitted. Whether they are a 400 g 23wkr or a 4000 g mec aspiration/PPHN kid and everything in between. The nurses are split. Some say, just do the footprints on everyone, and others say, not until they are stable. The main problem is we do not have inkless footprinters. So alot of people are upset about having to put ink on the tiny ones and scrubbing it off the ones who need extreme minimal stim. What does your unit do? I would love to hear all about it! Thanks!

We don't hang them at the bedside because aesthetics are more important to my managers than anything else.

Always by the PAL assuming there is a good waveform.

OK...another question. What does your skin care policy say about using soap on neonates. The hospital I came from used Johnsons and Johnsons on everyone. My new hospital says mild soap (phisoderm) on babies except those under 1000g. The babies under 1000g only get warm water. I would think soap for everyone, I can't imagine that warm water does anything other than smear everything around.

We've been slammed in the coastal NC area. Short staffed and full. We have been transporting moms out of our hospital to area hospitals because we don't have the NICU staff to take care of their babies!

Hi All, I was wondering what everyone did when they changed their TPN/IL. How often do you change the tubings, how do you change the tubings, etc. We: 1. Change TPN q24 and IL q12. 2. Lines are hung "cleanly" as opposed to sterilly. Honestly I think they are changed dirty because we don't use any sort of sterile field, just the packaging the tubings come in, and we change them and then walk across the room to hang them, rather than just hang them at the bedside. 3. We use a system that has a trifuse that directly connects to the PICC/UVC/PIV, etc. and then the IL tubing and TPN tubing connect to the trifuse. We change the tubings q24, but the trifuse q72. We are thinking we should change everything q24. Thanks in advance for any feedback you can offer.

Same here. Every NICU I have ever worked in just does the bridge with the loops to prevent pulling out, but never cover the insertion site.

32 Was The Highest I Ever Saw. We Did A Double Exchange On That Child.

Hi there all, Our hospital is about to embark on a very exciting time. We are getting ready to open a new women's and children's hospital and are going to individual patient rooms for the NICU. Here's the catch...management wants to allow parents to have food in the rooms. All the nurses do not. So the question is...What do you do? Do you allow food in your NICU? Please let me know if you have an open style unit or a single patient room unit. THanks so much!!!

Just a question about checking gastric residuals... I was just wondering if you check residuals and if you do, is there a rule about what size syringe you use. I came from a unit that used to check them with a minimum of a 20 cc syringe (no 10, 5, 3cc, etc) But then that unit stopped doing it because the literature did not support checking them. My new unit does check residuals, but I see nurses using 5cc and small syringes to check. I thought that the smaller syringes caused too much pressure. I would love any input you all would like to share!!! Thanks!!

Thank you for all the awesome responses!!! Keep them coming!

I am working on an infection control initiative in my NICU and I was wondering what other NICUs do about rings. I am new to this unit, but came from a unit that does not allow rings at all. My new unit allows all rings. My other question was isolette covers. How frequently do you change them? Here we only change them if they fall on the floor. ANY help with these questions would be wonderful. If anyone knows of any good infection control resources that would be an awesome bonus as well. Thanks so much!!!