Respiratory

Specialties NICU

Published

Hello,

i am a newer NICU nurse and was wondering if anyone has any good references for respiratory material on things like the jet/ ossilator and how to understand the settings on them such as amp, hrtz, map, IT, and good info on blood gases. Anything to understand any and all respiratory information would be greatly apprecriated.

Thank you!

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Specializes in NICU.

Amplitude (Amp)- pressure of the breath

Hertz (HTZ)- 1 HTZ= 60 breaths/min

Mean Airway Pressure (MAP)- Middle of the pressure wave (cm. of water)

Inspiratory Time (IT)- length of time of inspiration. On an Oscillator it is the ratio of IT vs ET (Expiratory Time).

Here is a video from an RT from the hospital where I did my nursing clinicals.

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Your best resource is your respiratory therapist. Get to know them. Ask them questions. They love to teach.

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Specializes in Neonatal.

Youtube, and your friendly neighborhood RT!

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I'm a friendly neighborhood RT!

On the jet/oscillator, the MAP and FiO2 are for oxygenation and hertz, Ti, and amplitude (delta P) are for ventilation.

For blood gas analysis, I love when an RN wants to know more. I could talk about blood gases all day. The most important thing is to look beyond the pH and recognize that there are two or even three primary problems.

If you have specific blood gas questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

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Specializes in NICU/Neonatal transport.

For HFOV ( I don't use jet) FiO2 and MAP affect PaO2/saturations. Delta p/amp affects CO2. Technically, hz can be used as well, but typically, it's just set at either 12 (bigger baby) or 15 (smaller baby). Hz is really just finding what the baby likes. We don't usually adjust that much.

Ventilation/oxygenation are much more separated with HFOV than they are with CMV.

When I was first starting out, I thought of it almost like this: your MAP is almost like the PEEP (it's not exactly, but it is a constant inflation amount) and then the amp is like a trampoline that goes above and below that line. The number determines how high that jump is.

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