MCURN

I have been a nurse for about 8 years, and most of my time has been spent in labour and delivery and postpartum. However due to personal reasons I believe it’s best for me to change specialties. My hospital has a great training program for New ICU nurses. 24 weeks both classroom time and orientation on the floor. I applied not thinking I had much of a chance but I just received a phone call from the manager to set up a meeting to discuss my application. I worked on a surgical unit for my first year of nursing and don’t really want to go back. I guess I am wondering if anyone else has made this big of a jump and how your experience went. Also any tips of things I should learn or look up prior to starting. thanks for the input in advance.

What Klone said is what we get on our unit. Basically anything that can happen to a female reproductive system we get. Our patients range from 18-110 years old with a variety of reproductive issues. Lots of hysterectomies and bladder & prolapse repair surgeries. Lots of gyne oncology patients that are admitted for a variety of reasons, such as chemotherapy, symptom management and surgeries. We will even have palliative patients on the unit. We will also have any antepartum patient admitted to hospital. Some reasons would be PIH, GDM, hyperemesis and previas. As well as dealing with miscarriages up to 22 weeks.

We do couplet care at my facility as well. Each nurse will have 4-5 rooms. So up to 5 moms and 5 infants. The charge nurse will do their best to spread out acuity which is becoming harder as we get sicker moms and babies. However we would never get a mag mom while mag is running. That would be a 1:1 on LDR. My usually assignment will include one fresh c/s and one late preterm. Then hopefully two healthy mom/infant pairs. Our unit is 42 beds with 10 nurses and 1 charge nurse being our baseline. We maybe will have 1 nursing assistant but with covid they usually get pulled to other units.

Hi everyone. I was wondering if anyone could tell me their experiences switching from mother baby to nicu nursing. I am currently a nurse on a mother/baby unit and have been there for about six years. Prior to that I did a couple years of l&d. I have been thinking about making the jump to nicu as I have started to feel bored with my current unit. However I’m not sure if it’s a good idea or if I will be the right fit for more critical care. Thanks everyone.

Our base is 4 couplets. On a crazy understaffed shift we have gone up to 5, however it is rare. I would never work in a place where 5-6 is the norm. Emergencies with moms and infants can occur at anytime during their hospital stay. And that would be on top of helping moms breast feed, dealing with late preterms, infants on phototherapy, infants with sugar instability, neonatal abstinence scoring, basic teaching, c/s protocols, doing bloodwork on moms and newborns, etc etc.

The concept of a "nurse is a nurse is a nurse" that gets tossed around management is ridiculous. In areas that are highly specialized it is dangerous to move nurses into other units and is unsafe to all patients. I have been a postpartum nurse for 5 years and would not have a hot clue to what to do with an acutely ill adult pt. Give me a mom that is PPHing any day but just not a colostomy lol. Just as when a medicine nurse gets pulled they have no idea about baby care and education we provide. It is completely reasonable to refuse a pt load that you feel is out of your scope and is unsafe. .

I work in a high risk postpartum unit that does approximately 6000 deliveries a year. We take care of 4 couplets and the nurse assigned to a couplet is responsible for both mom and babe. The major babe assessment (weight, measurements, reflexes etc) and first feeding (usually) are done in recovery on L&D. but then we are responsible afterwards for vitals, a head to toe assessment (slightly less then the initial), and sugars if needed. I will usually delay the bath, especially if its a prime they are exhausted and need sleep. But thats not all the nurses on my unit. Overall I find the admission the easy part lol its the teaching afterwards and help with breast feeding that take up all of my time.

we use nitrous oxide at my hospital. It can be a god send. It is fast acting and the risk for crossing the placenta is basically minimal. we use it especially with patients who dont want morphine/fentanyl or an epidural r/t risks either to babe or mom. However you have to make sure that the unit has a good ventilation system as some of the gas can escape the mask or be exhaled by the patient. there is research that states that NO2 can have cause birth affects in the first trimester and since the majority of nurses in this field are female it needs to be taken seriously.

In my hospital it wouldnt prevent you from getting a job. However during orientation they stress that you should call in sick if you have a cold sore. HSV can have very serious outcomes if a neonate was to catch it. However I do see nurses just mask if they do have one and practice good hand washing and they have not gotten in trouble.