bunny722

i have seen 22 weekers survive into healthy kids. Yes, many of them have physical or developmental problems, but they do survive. Another thing is that in my state if a baby is born alive a birth certificate needs to be done. Where I work we always are honest with the parents whether or not their baby was born alive or not. I can't imagine telling a parent their baby was born dead and not letting the see the baby, when in fact it is alive! However, in my hospital, we only resuscitate if the baby is 24+ weeks. And, we are up front about this to parents too when a premature delivery looks likely.

I cut and pasted this article, so I apologize the "form" is not better. A 38-Year-Old Woman With Fetal Loss and Hysterectomy Benjamin P. Sachs, MB, BS, Discussant DR DELBANCO: Mrs W is a married, self-employed, healthy woman living in a community several hours from Boston. She has private health insurance. At age 38, she was admitted to the hospital for elective delivery of her first child, but the admission ended tragically with fetal loss, hysterectomy, and a prolonged hospitalization. *********************************** Moderator note: This appears to be an excellent article. I would ask you please post the link so we may access and read and possibly, discuss it. It's very cautionary! Thank you for understanding. deb

The big city hospital I work in uses pretty much all of the above, but we also use the Huggs system. We don't usually have problems with it, and when an alarm does go off, security comes up and asks to see the baby. The bands never get stinky because the babies are only here for a few days, but you can always suspend tamper it and change the band. No problems yet!

I am an L & D nurse and we use cytotec all the time for cervical ripening. We use PO and PV routes. There is no waiver for patients to sign, and the doctors use it without giving the patients full, informed consent about the fact that it is not FDA approved and that it can cause uterine rupture! There are plenty of other drugs/methods we can use with much less risk. I for one will never let them use it on me whenever I have a baby!

I am a maternity nurse and I love it. If you click on the link for nursing schools on this website, you can then search by state and I think maybe by specialty too. Nursingspectrum.com is also a good website. I think if you can handle the gross stuff of med-surg then once you work your way into maternity it is so rewarding. Many people think it is just playing with babies and stuff, but I do high-risk and there is a lot of stuff you see that you won't soon forget. Many sad stories, but also many more happy ones. It is a very emotional specialty to work in. The other thing is that many good hospitals (ones that do high-risk and are well-known), only take RN's and some only take BSN's. My recommendation would be to just go for your BSN while you can because otherwise your career paths are limited and it is not as easy to go back to school once you start making $$. Good luck with everything...I do hope you choose maternity nursing!

I worked on a very busy med-surg floor when I was a new grad. The nurse to patient ratios were too high, and the patients are very acute with IV's, tubes, pumps, post-op, epidurals, etc.. Then you have the elderly patients who are confused or combative (and in a community hospital like mine, we didn't have bed alarms- we would have to put a posey vest on them). You have the dependent patients (most of whom end up having diarrhea on your shift) who need to be turned and fluffed and buffed. Then you have the younger patients who complain all the time no matter how much pain med you give them. You've got your patients with a lot of psychosocial problems. Then you have the patients who are dying and require a lot of time keeping them and their families comfortable. Then you have the people who are really sick and need frequent monitoring or may need to be transferred to an ICU. You could have one or more of each type of patient in your daily assignment and it really is too much. And unlike a tele floor, the patients are not on monitors, so if someone has to be checked often, you can't just look at the monitor you have to go into the room and physically assess them. I now work in maternity and I couldn't be happier. The physical work is less demanding. The patient population is better since it is primarily healthy women and babies. We do get sick moms and babies, but they go to the SICU or NICU respectively. The OB service where I work prides itself in being all RN staffed. We don't have PCA's so we do everything. This allows us to have a better nurse to patient ratio and we are able to spend more time with the patients and provide thorough care. I still do med-surg from time to time as an agency nurse because I do miss it, but each time I do a shift, I remember why I left it. Still, my med-surg experience is invaluble to my nursing career. The skills learned in med-surg are carried through every specialty. Med-surg is where you learn all the fundamentals of nursing. How to start IV's, put in foleys, insert NG tubes, etc.. Med-surg is where you learn how to be a nurse. It is where you put to use everything you learned in nursing school. In med-surg, you see everything. So to all you new grads, you may not like med-surg, but once you do it and then move on to the specialty of your choice, you will see how important it was to get that experience. It will only make you a better ICU, peds, OB nurse, etc... Thank you for reading my long posting.