question about neonatal nursing

[cristina_lrm05]

i'm a high school senior and i'm gonna go to community college and become an LVN and work my way up as i go. i've been interested in neonatal nursing since i would love to work with newborns and i wanted to know what exactly neo. nurses do and how much college education they need. i hope somebody can help me. any response would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

[Harmony213]

Hi, I'm going through my pre-reqs right now and work as a Nurse Tech. Over Christmas break, I got floated to the NICU and I LOVED it! It was stressful but isn't has hard on your feet as most other places (at least thats how it was in this one). All of your patients are within 5 feet of you! I did not see any LVNs or LPNs in there though. The RN's fed the babies, changed diapers, took vitals, but of course, sometimes feeding the babies involved the feeding tubes. There was one baby in there who couldn't swallow her own saliva so she had to be suctioned every 45 minutes. They also had to fill out flow sheets I think, but they didn't really do too much charting. Then of course, whenever the alamas go off you have to rush over and make sure everything is okay-that is the stressful part! I'm sure there is more but I cannot think of what else as of right now since it was almost 2 months ago, but I think it was such a great unit. Good luck!

[prmenrs, RN]

If you look over in the NICU forum, there are "stickies" @ the top of the forum that may give you most of the info. If there's more you want to know, I suggest you post in that forum.

I will tell you that LV/PNs are not hired in most NICUs. I suggest you try to get your ADN instead. Good Luck.

https://allnurses.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=33