What education is needed to be a Neonatal Nurse?

friendlyjane · Jan 11, 2013

Takingcare of new mothers and babies sounds like you would like postpartum. When I here OB nurse I think of all the nurses that work with OB's, like Labor and Deliver nurses and Antepartum nurses and also postpartum nurses. To me it seems like a broader term. Postpartumis where women go right after delivery of their babies to be taken care of and assessedfor any complications. There is also patient teaching about infant care alsobecause of course much of the time the baby is in the room with the mother. Tobecome a postpartum nurse or a NICU nurse you need to obtain your RN and thatis really it, but right now in this job environment it is hard to walk in as anew RN and become a NICU nurse or a postpartum nurse. I think there are stepsto make it more likely that you would be hired into the field that you love.The hard thing is to take the steps to get the best possible chance to gethired on as a nurse. You can get your RN by either getting your associate ofscience in nursing or ASN or a bachelor’s of science in nursing or BSN. Youneed less prereqs for your ASN but you go to both an ASN and BSN nurising school thesame amount of time. Some of the nursing courses are different but it takes twoyears basically. The trend of hospitals is that they tend to want to hirerBSN's over ASN's. I kind of know why but not in detail, but there is somethingcalled magnet status that hospitals want to obtain. It is like a title. Thehospitals have to do things to obtain that status. One is that 80% of their nursingstaff has to have a bachelor’s degree or higher. So hospitals are going withmore BSN's. The next step that I am about to do is get my CNA or certified nursing assistant and get hired ona floor that I would like to go into. Myself I like the heart and criticalstuff so I would like to get a CNA job on a Tele floor or a step down unit form the ICU. For me it will just bepart time but i want to show that I am a hard worker. A hospital is more likelyto hire me if I already work for them. That is my plan anyway. So for you itwould be getting a CNA job on a postpartum floor. I am not sure but I don'tthink they have CNA's in the NICU. My son was in the NICU for 6 weeks bc he was a premie and I never saw a NICU aid. I know in the hospital he was in after he went to the step down unit there was always postpartum nurses that were pulled from the floor because at that time they had so many sick babies and not enough NICU nurses. I am not sure if many hospitals are like that. There are programs that many hospitals in myarea do and that is a nurse residency program for new graduates. You have toapply just like a normal nursing job but you get trained in a classroom andfollow a teaching nurse around called a preceptor for I think 2 to 6 monthsdepending on what area of nursing you are in. If you get a job on a med-surg flooryou would not precept as long as someone getting a job in the NICU. Now the CNAthing is up to you of course but that is just something I am doing bc it seems so hardfor many to get a job after nursing school. So there is no extra school you goto to become a NICU nurse. Sorry if any info is wrong. This is just from what I see in my area and reading and research on this website. Good luck!

friendlyjane · Jan 12, 2013

Wow! I don't know what happened to my post but so many words are smushed together without any spaces inbetween them. I did not type it that way. Huh! Sorry about that guys!!!

KelRN215, BSN, RN · Jan 12, 2013

Hi, I am very interested in becoming a Neonatal nurse! But I was wondering what all that entails! i really want to work with babies in critical condition but I would also be interested in working with helping the mothers and taking care of the healthy newborns. Do I have to go to school for both? Or do i just need a degree in nursing and then i have specific training for either. And is the second option called an OB nurse? Help would be very much appreciated!

You go to school to be a nurse. You don't go to school for specialties unless you are going for a graduate degree. Once you get a job, you go through orientation for that unit/specialty.

The environments you describe are NICU and newborn nursery. A newborn nursery is typically located on the post-partum floor (or the general maternity floor in a smaller hospital) and there is usually only one nurse assigned to it. Most babies don't spend much time there since they're in the room with their mothers most of the time. The babies might be in there because they need to be under the bili lights or be warmed or because the mom went to a breast feeding class or something. If you want the teaching part, I'd think you would rather work in postpartum.

Getting a job in the NICU, especially as a New Grad, is incredibly difficult. Your best bet for doing that would be to try to get an aide/tech job in one while in school or to try to get your senior preceptorship in the NICU.

An OB nurse to me is a nurse who takes care of pregnant women... nurses working in L&D, antepartum and even postpartum, but not a newborn nursery nurse. In a smaller community hospital, you will find that they have one maternity floor that encompasses everything- antepartum, labor and delivery, postpartum and newborn nursery and the nurses will work for the floor and care for whatever patients they are assigned to. A larger hospital would have separate antepartum, labor and delivery and postpartum floors.