Wondering if your unit has any kind of protocol or method to "wean" parents off their babies monitors. Meaning, how to you get them to be more attuned to the baby and less to the monitor especially when baby is stable and working toward discharge.
I dont feel like our unit is very good at preparing families for the monitor free life at home.
We have the ability to do parent screen on the Philips monitors but we rarely use it.
When my son camp home from NICU we used the snuza. It's a motion detector that clips on the front of the diaper and contacts the abdomen. He wore it until he was about 6-8 months old. It worked great only one false alarm and one substantiated alarm. The owlet made me nervous because I know how crazy I am trying to keep my pulse ox probes on and keep them reading correctly when my kids are kicking. My wife was set for a minor heart attack every time the thing went off so false alarms were a concern. As well as alarm fatigue. If you knew how many families turned off their apnea monitors and pulse ox machines because they"go off to much"
When we were transitioning out of NICU we just turned our monitor around. If it beeped and you couldn't see it it was just a cue to look at the baby.
Yeah, we get asked about the Owlet a lot, but are not allowed to give our opinions on it.
I'm not sure our unit has a standard on what to say about Owlet monitors but I try to stick by the AAP recommendations which discourage the use of products that purport to reduce the risk of SIDS. I just give the parents that information and the rationale (sometimes using such devices encourages parents to slack on the evidence-based strategies) but I do not get emphatic. People have to make their own decisions, I just try to emphasize safe sleep environment, safe sleep positions etc. . .
We don't have a specific way of doing it, but as babies get more stable, we unplug them to get them out for cuddles and during baths etc, parents get used to it. By the time they're ready to come off monitoring usually parents are ready and excited (its more a pain for us, we have to actually check the baby is breathing - monitoring is so handy!)
It's definitely a hard task to keep them from staring at the monitor and not reading their baby's cues! We'll turn a monitor so the parents can't see it for a baby who's been bradying w/ feeds to see if they are able to pick it up by just watching for particular behaviors. If they get the hang of it then sometimes we'll decrease their required stay post brady.
Alex Egan, LPN, EMT-B
4 Articles; 857 Posts
Not my usual neighborhood but I'm gonna chime in.
When my son camp home from NICU we used the snuza. It's a motion detector that clips on the front of the diaper and contacts the abdomen. He wore it until he was about 6-8 months old. It worked great only one false alarm and one substantiated alarm. The owlet made me nervous because I know how crazy I am trying to keep my pulse ox probes on and keep them reading correctly when my kids are kicking. My wife was set for a minor heart attack every time the thing went off so false alarms were a concern. As well as alarm fatigue. If you knew how many families turned off their apnea monitors and pulse ox machines because they"go off to much"
When we were transitioning out of NICU we just turned our monitor around. If it beeped and you couldn't see it it was just a cue to look at the baby.