well baby nursery RN

[NatalieGRN]

What do you do in a well baby nursery? Do you floast between postpartum and nursery?

[rnin02]

In our WBN, it really depends on where you've been oriented. The plan for our unit is to go to "mother-baby nursing" in May, so that each nurse will take the mom and her baby. Currently post-partum and WBN are separate, and they are working on cross-training everyone. Until everyone is cross-trained, we have our "home" unit, and you work on that unit unless the other unit needs help and you are trained for it. Hope that helped somewhat.

[33-weeker]

I find that varies widely depending on where you work. At our hospital, the nursery nurses only float if they want to and have been trained in other areas.

Within our nursery, we work according to skills and training. Some only do level I (well-baby). Some also do transition and attend deliveries (catching baby from doc). Others do all that plus work level II (NICU). A few take turns being in charge. I do everything, but I choose not to float - even though I have some past PP experience.

There are some hospitals that require you to float to PP or even to L&D also. Some do mother-baby and expect you to care for couplets (mom and babe).

At one hospital where I worked, the well-baby nursery and the NICU were separated. They had completely different staffing groups for each.

You just have to ask a lot of questions before you decide where to take a job.

[33-weeker]

If you just do well-baby, you assess them, feed them, bathe them, weigh them, teach parents, help with breastfeeding, assist circumcisions, assist docs on rounds, draw blood (usually heel stick), watch for the few that get sick - intervene/notify the doc, and discharge the rest.