CareForBabies

I am just wondering if many NICU nurses have taken PALS. We are not required to, but often keep babies in our NICU until they are several months old. We are also required to float to the pediatric floor. Wondering if PALS would be relevant/helpful in these circumstances. I believe NRP is technically intended for neonates up to 4 weeks old only, but we use it on all of our NICU patients regardless of age/corrected age.

Hi, has anyone out there implemented safe sleep in their NICU? We have a new policy that has been very difficult. No prone or side lying, HOB flat, no boundaries or snuggly for all patients >34wks regardless of medical condtion. Needless to say babies are not resting because they are flopping all over the beds. Any advice? Our medical director is strict about this policy.

I was just wondering... How low do you wean your isolettes before moving baby to open crib? At what temp do you dress and/or swaddle baby? We typically wean to 28C and then place babies in open crib. This seems much warmer than room temperature and I wonder if we should wean down farther like 25-26C.

Our NICU is considering changing to standardized concentrations for all of our drips. I think its a JCAHO thing. Has anyone done this yet? Currently we use the rule of 6's to calculate our drips. Any baby that is on 20mcg/kg/min of dopamine gets the same rate; the only difference is how many mg's of dopamine is in your syringe/bag. We want to switch so that all dopamine syringes are the same concentration mg/ml. We have to do this for all of our drips: insulin, fentanyl, versed, dobutamine, etc. Does anyone have recommendations for the concentrations that there NICU's use? I believe this is how drips work in the adult nursing world. Does anyone have any teaching tools or charts to help us with this process? This could be a difficult change over.

I work in a 40 bed NICU that needs a new Kardex and a consistent method of giving report. Our current Kardex is old and usually not updated because it just doesn't work for us anymore. Our shift report is very casual and nurses just write it out on blank paper. Important information is easily missed. We would like a structured report that follows an easy but thorough kardex. Please help:redbeathe