Sweeper933

I was wondering if any of you know some good nursing agencies in the Chicago area. I'm a NICU nurse, and our census has been dangerously low for months now. We are being downstaffed like crazy - as we are only working with about half of the nurses we...

Is anybody else having this issue in their hospital??? We use irradiated blood when we give transfusions to our babies (as do other areas of the hospital - like for chemo patients and other stuff...) Homeland Security has decided that the equipment (...

Auscultation / aspiration upon insertion, and before each feed/med. X-Ray only if it's an NJ/ND. We also chart with each VS what cm the tube is at at the nares / lips.

I also agree with the previous posters. Sometimes the first sign that the line is going bad is that the waveform stops "behaving".

I was wondering how you all handle the fortification process in your units. Do you have a seperate room / area in the unit to do it all in? Do you use HMF? Formula? A combination of the 2 when the calories get big? When using powdered formula to fort...

We also double check the label with another RN. We bring the second RN to the baby's bedside, and check the breast milk label against the bedside card, using name and dob. We add the patient ID if it's twins, just to make sure. "Word on the street" ...

We will use a 5fr feeding tube as a catheter on our babies. Works pretty well. But we have to make sure to use the old style ones - the ones that connect to both feeding tubes and IV syringes, not our new orange feeding syringe only ones. This way, w...

How do you deal with skin integrity and all of that stuff on kids with long term IVs...??? I can't imagine having to put a bag on a kid for more than a few times in a row, let along days / weeks!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Certification-Review-Neonatal-Intensive-Nursing/dp/1416036679/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252801839&sr=1-1 That's the book we all used on my unit. Although, a bunch of us have been taking a review class that has ...

Evidently the fun on my unit is continuing. I just got a call from one of the managers to see if I could come in to work tonight at 11pm. Evidently in the last 18 or so hours, they've gotten 35 wk twins, 27wk triplets, a kid with skeletal anomolies /...

This whole week we've gotten nothing but sick term kids. Which is always a nice surprise addition to the census. At least with the preterms, you have somewhat of a warning as to their admission. And all of these term kids have been really sick. A fe...

We (finally) slowed back down to normal after being crazy/busy all year. Our census is back to normal, but our acuity is still really high. A few really sick kids and a few really time-intensive chronics do wonders for staffing...

We weigh the diapers if they are on IV fluids, on oxygen, under phototherapy, or on diuretics. Otherwise we just do diaper checks.

We have several social workers that just deal with our Moms / families. If Mom is inpatient on antepartum, then they get hooked up with them at that point as well.

Even when it's an "off" time (non feeding or vitals) we still chart a lot of stuff each hour - bed temps, hr, resp rate, O2, IV status.... And for the first hour of our shift, we always chart their position, color, and their behavior (awake, sleeping...

The wafer is the donut shaped piece of duoderm that gets cut out to go between the skin and the bag. It gives the bag something better than just skin to stick on to. It also helps protect the skin surrounding the ostomy. As far as the paste goes - I ...

Have you tried using stoma paste? It's used to fill in the gaps between the wafer and the bag. Works well when you have a tight area to work in and it's hard to get a good seal between the wafer and the bag all the way around. In my unit, when the st...

All this math talk makes me really glad that we have our own NICU nutritionist with us during rounds every day! They are the ones who keep watchful eyes on all of the kcal/kg/day according to the growth charts and total fluid needs / restrictions and...

And it continues... 35 4/7 twin girls, born right at 2000 when I walk in the door. I get twin B - who is a champ. Sugars a fine, temps are great, eating 15-20cc q3h PO, planning on sending her up to newborn after rounds in the morning. Twin A was t...

Well we never make q4 vitals due at 7-11-3... because then it would always be due during shift change - no matter if it were a 8 or 12 (or 4) hour shift. Because of this - vitals are never more than 3 hours after you walk in the door (start shift at ...

Most of our babies get hands on vitals every 6 hours. Either 8-2, 9-, or 10-4 depending on what their q3 eating schedule is. When they're unstable (on HFOV), they get hands on vitals every 4 hours. Once they're close to going home and eating every 4 ...

We (finally!!!) have the Philips monitors. Touch screen functions are nice. As previous poster mentioned, it can be a process to view more than one baby at a time on a monitor. However - the layout of our unit makes it so we can see all of the babies...

We do footprints at admission / as soon as the baby is stable enough / has no IVs on their foot. As far as getting the ink off - we have found that the hospital lotion works extremely well! Just put a big glob of the lotion on a diaper cloth and the ...

I can't imagine not having windows!! Anyway - I like the design of our unit. We have 7 big rooms, each being able to hold 4-9 babies. Your assignment is always all in the same room, so you can see your babies at all times. Sometimes the rooms do get ...

We also only treat when they're symptomatic. If they're able to get Indocin, they get that, along with fluid restriction (usually at 80/kg/d). If not / if Indocin doesn't work, we'll ligate if they're still symptomatic.