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Category Archives: NICU

April 04 2020

Leadership and Ethics

Author Rosie's Nurse corner Posted on Categories Critical Thinking, NICU

The ethical situation that comes to mind this week is religious ethics.  This theory focuses on religion, which is depicted by the parent’s upbringing and the older family members typically.  One particular faith, Jehovah’s Witness, does not allow for blood transfusions.  This is very important when you have a baby in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) that is in need of the transfusion and the parent will not consent.  The treating neonatologist will need to get a court order to do the transfusions.  In an extreme emergency, if two doctors sign off that it is an emergency, then the baby will receive the transfusions while they await the court order.  As a parent of a premature baby myself, I could not imagine not doing everything I could to save my child.  But in this case, the religious code of ethics is based on the upbringing of the parent (Denisco & Barker, 2012).

The parent refusing to allow treatment of transfusions to their baby would be a hindrance to the baby’s care, while at the same time as nurses we are trying to promote a  family-centered type of care involving the caregivers in the decision making and treatment  (Meadow, Feudtner, Matheny Antommaria, Sommer, & Lantos, 2010).  When my baby was in the level 3 critical NICU, they had open rooms, because the babies were too critical to be in closed rooms.  I watched a baby in front of us get sicker by the day and hearing the nurses and the doctors speak about the need for a blood transfusion and other treatments.  By the time they gave the baby the blood transfusion, it was too late, and the baby was terminal.  You as the parent are watching and hearing this because, in this type of critical setup, there is nothing between you and the next bed except a curtain and in front of you there is not a curtain.  As a nurse I thought to myself, how can they be having this discussion right in the open this way? As a parent I thought, how can these parents watch their baby die? I thought about how those nurses felt and if I were the nurse in that situation, what would I have done?

With the use of religious ethics, we may not agree with the family, but as nurses, we need to respect the other person’s customs and beliefs as long as the baby is being taken care of and there is not a medical threat to the baby’s life. When I stop and think about the nurse manager that was supposed to be the example, all we heard from her was complaints about the parents and how ignorant they were.  A part of me agreed, however, the nurse part of me, the part that is compassionate with the parents dealing with a decision they probably hate to make came out.  I said to the manager, we are all very much entitled to our opinions and they may not be the views of our patients, but in this crisis, we just need to support the parents because the baby will receive a transfusion whether they agree or not by court order.

References

Denisco, S. M., & Barker, A. M. (2012). 25. Advanced practice nursing: Evolving rules for the transformation of the profession (2nd ed., pp. 569-581). Retrieved from https://campus.capella.edu/web/library/home

Meadow, W., Feduter, C., & Matheny-Antomennaria, A. H. (2012, April 13, 2010). A premature infant with necrotizing enetrosoliteis. Special Articles-Ethics rounds. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-0079

 

 

January 01 2020

Evidence-Based Models and Practice Settings

Author Rosie's Nurse corner Posted on Categories NICU

One of the clinical problems that I see in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is nurses and healthcare staff becoming complacent in their environments because it is a job and the passion is lost allowing the nurse to move through the motions.  We are all guilty in many professions, not just nursing, of treating people matter of fact and we forget it may be our hundredth experience, but it is their first experience, no matter what the experience is. When we approach any person, especially in our nursing experience, we have to approach them with kindness and passion. We as nurses cannot continue to eat our young (the new nurses coming to work) and continue to treat our patients as if we need to move on to our next task. Our body language, tone of voice and facial expressions give away our genuineness.  We are all busy, but we have to put that aside and go back to compassion and empathy, thinking about how we want to be treated in this situation if we were in it.  We have to utilize our critical thinking to see what level of care that parent needs to get through this situation at hand.

One problem that I see is infant readiness for oral feeding of the premature baby.  There are different opinions on the expertise of how it is done.  Being able to see the situation first hand as a mother and then being able to see it as a professional, made me aware of not only my actions but others around me.  My son was given breast milk initially via NG Tube until he was ready to try a bottle.  Initially, the bottle feeding was started once per day and increased and they would leave the bottle-feeding for when the parents were there to feed the baby to create that bonding experience.  One day I arrived at the NICU on a weekend ready to spend the entire day with my son and getting to feed him several times per day.  The shift nurse that I had never met said that I was feeding my son wrong.  She took over the feeding entirely and when the rest of the feedings occurred that day, she took over because she stated that I was making the baby aspirate due to my inexperience.  I was only allowed to hold him.  When the change of shift occurred, she said okay time to go, I stated that we were in a private room and the nurses close the door so that we do not have to leave during the change of shift.  We were in a private room because at one point the baby had developed a hospital-borne infection called Serratia and he had to remain there until discharge.   Staying in the room was an arrangement that I made with upper management due to the fact that I worked full time as did my husband and we did not have much visiting time with him during the week.  She proceeded about her business and ripped the baby right out of my arms.

I cried for days until Monday came and I made a complaint to my head nurse who assured me that this was documented in my chart right on the front. She showed me the chart and stated that she would speak to the nurse about her abruptness.  The weekend nurse assigned apologized to us a few days later, but by then my feelings were already crushed.   It was later discovered that the baby was aspirating even when he was fed via g-tube it had nothing to do with how I was holding or feeding him.  It was inevitable.  In the end, it was decided that the baby would have a Mickey G-tube inserted surgically for feedings to expedite his discharge home.

When discussing with peers, the Colorado model seemed appropriate because it has a patient-centered focus.  In the NICU, the focus is not only on the baby but the parents, they become your patients, too.  In this instance, the issue that I experienced was discussed and it came to be known, that yes, as nurses we can have the one-track mind of getting things done and checked off a list. There is a lot that happens in the NICU that is unexpected, so the less that can be focused on that is routine, the better.  Nurses can do things better, faster and with expertise, but is it really better?  Parents would say no because they are left out of the important equation in the Colorado model.  The Colorado model discusses that patients should have some control or personal choice in decision making, whether for personal preferences religious or cultural decisions (Goode, Fink, Krugman, Oman, & Traditi, 2010).

 

 

References

Goode, C. J., Fink, R. M., Krugman, M., Oman, K. S., & Traditi, L. K. (2010, August 10). The Colorado patient-centered interprofessional evidence-based practice model: A framework for transformation. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 96-105.

October 10 2019

A Gap in Practice in the NICU

Author Rosie's Nurse corner Posted on Categories NICU

Most recently I was asked to write as a contributor for a textbook called Comprehensive Neonatal Nursing 6th edition about what gaps there are in teh neonatal intensive care units.  The editors Carole Kenner, Leslie B. Altimier, and Marina V. Boykova, put together this textbook to support practice strategies and sound clinical decisions in teh neonatal intensive care unit.  My focus is on a NICU toolkit. https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Neonatal-Nursing-Care-Sixth/dp/0826139094/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=9780826139146&linkCode=qs&qid=1570765494&s=books&sr=1-1

The specific gap in practice in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is the challenge that parents face when they are discharged home.  The underlying assumptions of these issues include a lack of confidence to be able to take care of the baby, not enough information to understand the machines, a lack of practice time, and increased readmission rates to the hospital within 30 days of discharge from the NICU.  Regarding the population parents of premature babies, the argument that is most often heard from the nurses and the NICU team is that the parents have been in the NICU watching the nurses for the last five to seven months and they should be able to take care of their infant (Hutchinson, Spillett, & Cronin, 2012).

The parents of premature babies have a higher stress level when the babies are discharged due to not receiving specific education to ease the transition home (Busse, Stromgren, Thorngate, & Thomas, 2013).  In Miles’s (1994) study conducted via the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) following discharge from the NICU, it proved that there was a higher stress level for parents when they were discharged home.  Premature infant readmissions were analyzed and it was determined that there was a 31% readmission rate to the NICU.  The parents needed to be taught skills on how to avoid re-hospitalization (Hutchinson et al., 2012).

Premature babies were being born daily with multiple medical conditions that carried long term through the span of their lives.  When they were transitioned to their homes, they required management of their special needs in the home setting.  The transition program began 30 days before the baby was discharged to the home.  If the teaching was not done prior to the discharge home, then when they went home, the baby was susceptible to errors made at home with medications, infection control, or treatment in general.

When a baby is taken home from the regular nursery it is noted to be a scary time for parents due to the newness of being a parent.  For a parent of a premature baby, the anxiety increases especially if the baby had a long NICU stay.  The parents are accustomed to having the nurses there for support but when they go home, they feel alone.

The proposed solution for this gap in service is the implementation of a NICU navigator tool kit.  The toolkit is designed to help hospital nurses, doctors, therapists, social workers, and parents communicate more effectively towards reducing the parent’s anxiety surrounding their baby’s discharge to the home. The presentation of the NICU patient navigator toolkit contains evidence-based studies and real-life examples to demonstrate the toolkit’s necessity in the NICU.

 

 

References

Busse, M., Stromgren, K., Thorngate, L., & Thomas, K. (2013, August). Parent responses to stress: PROMIS in the NICU. Critical Care Nurse, 33(4), 1-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.4037/ccn2013715

Hutchinson, S. W., Spillett, M. A., & Cronin, M. (2012). Parents’ experiences during their infant’s transition from neonatal intensive care unit to home: A qualitative study. The Qualitative Report, 17(23), 1-20. Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR17/hutchinson.pdf

April 04 2019

Religious Ethics

Author Rosie's Nurse corner Posted on Categories NICU

The religious ethics theory focuses on religion, which is depicted by the parent’s upbringing and the older family members typically.  One particular faith, Jehovah’s Witness, does not allow for blood transfusions.  This is very important when you have a baby in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) that is in need of the transfusion and the parent will not consent.  The treating neonatologist will need to get a court order to do the transfusions.  In an extreme emergency, if two doctors sign off that it is an emergency, then the baby will receive the transfusions while they await the court order.  As a parent of a premature baby myself, I could not imagine not doing everything I could to save my child.  But in this case, the religious code of ethics is based on the upbringing of the parent (Denisco & Barker, 2012).

The parent refusing to allow treatment of transfusions to their baby, would be a hindrance to the baby’s care, while at the same time as nurses we are trying to promote a  family-centered type of care involving the caregivers in the decision making and treatment  (Meadow, Feudtner, Matheny Antommaria, Sommer, & Lantos, 2010).  When my baby was in the level 3 critical NICU, they had open rooms, because the babies were too critical to be in closed rooms.  I watched a baby in front of us get sicker by the day and hearing the nurses and the doctors speak about the need for a blood transfusion and other treatments.  By the time they gave the baby the blood transfusion, it was too late, and the baby was terminal.  You as the parent are watching and hearing this because in this type of critical setup, there is nothing between you and the next bed except a curtain and in front of you, there is not a curtain.  As a nurse I thought to myself, how can they be having this discussion right in the open this way? As a parent I thought, how can these parents watch their baby die? I thought about how those nurses felt and if I were the nurse in that situation, what would I have done.

With the use of the religious ethics, we may not agree with the family, but as nurses, we need to respect the other person’s customs and beliefs as long as the baby is being taken care of and there is not a medical threat to the baby’s life.

References

Denisco, S. M., & Barker, A. M. (2012). 25. In Advanced practice nursing: Evolving rules for the transformation of the profession (2nd ed., pp. 569-581). Retrieved from https://campus.capella.edu/web/library/home

Meadow, W., Feduter, C., & Matheny-Antomennaria, A. H. (2012, April 13, 2010). A premature infant with necrotizing enterocolitis. Special Articles-Ethics rounds. http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2010-0079

Rosie Moore, RN, DNP

Visit my Website to learn more www.rosiemoore27.com
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March 03 2019

Comparison of Theories in the NICU

Author Rosie's Nurse corner Posted on Categories NICU

The Roy Adaptation Model was known to focus on spiritual matters and promoting health amongst a family-centered type of care.  In the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), this especially holds true, because of the situation of critical illness faced daily, The Roy Adaptation Model helps families adapt to a changing environment and deal with the quality of life or in some instances death.  In the NICU, Roy’s model would work well as the nurses acclimate to the parents and what is happening to their baby. With Roy’s model, she indicates that health and illness are part of a person’s everyday life, this, in turn, will cause the environment to change in which they live. If the parents are to respond in a positive way and come out of it stronger, they will need to adapt to the change (DeNisco & Barker, 2012).

People will often adapt to a change in their life when they can respond positively to the changes that are happening around them.  An example would be the early premature birth of a baby, unexpected changes in the life of a mother and those immediately around her in the family are affected.  This will include other children, spouse and anyone else part of the family’s nuclear family, which in some cultures can be a very extensive family. That mother and father will use whatever coping mechanisms they learned in life to cope with the stress and the changes that they are facing.

There are three kinds of stimuli considered in Roy’s Adaptation Model, these will all affect the subgroup of premature parents in the NICU, because of the type of unit it is, a unit of uncertainty running high with emotions that go up and down.  In a different culture, the role of the nurse will differ.  For example, think about a mother that speaks a different language and is unable to get clear communication to and from the nurse.  A translator would have to be used to explain what was happening to her as a mother and then what is happening to her baby in the NICU.  For example in one article, there was a baby born early, with a mother that did not speak the language and the family did not fully understand what was happening in the NICU.  The family asked for their “Curandero” a community healer in their culture to clean the baby with an egg (Peterson-Iyer, 2008). The nurse needs to be able to use cultural sensitivity in explaining why this cannot be done, without offending the family but still including them in the baby’s care.

Jean Watson’s theory on caring can also be applied to the NICU because it is nurturing and will be needed in a critical location like the NICU. Jean Watson’s theory of human caring focuses on giving as an extension of self.  It is about instilling faith and hope in a person.  When a person is sensitive to another person’s feelings, it helps to build a trusting relationship.  It is important to acknowledge the positive and negative feelings that a person puts out to another person.  Jean Watson believes in her theory that we experience personal growth through teaching and learning as well as spiritual and socio-cultural well-being.  Jean Watson’s theory emphasizes spiritual and nursing practice, which in turn will promote caring and love to the patient.  This will then develop into a caring relationship.  The theory allows the nurse to understand the other person’s perspectives on things and form a mutual bond.  It also promotes growth when a caring environment is formed allowing the patient to be who they are and be accepted for it (Alligood, 2013).

The role of the nurse in Jean Watson’s theory is to instill faith and hope as well as build a trusting relationship.  In the article about the Mexican Indian family, Jean Watson’s theory would apply.  The mother in this instance speaks a different language that may be unique to the translation company that the NICU uses causing a barrier.  The mother, as in the article may be young and not have received prenatal care.  Their faith is going to be different from our own, as when the father of the child, wanted to use a “Curandero”, but as nurses, we must be able to provide culturally competent care.

References

Alligood, M. (2013). Adaptation model. In Nursing theorists and their work (8th ed., pp. 303-327). [Vital Source Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://campus.capella.edu/web/library/home

DeNisco, S. M., & Barker, A. M. (2012). Theory-based advanced nursing practice. In Advanced practice nursing: Evolving roles for the transformation of the profession (2nd ed., pp. 361-377). [Vital Source Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://campus.capella.edu/web/library/home

Peterson-Iyer, K. (2008). A difficult birth: Language and cultural differences. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/medical/culturally-competent-care/difficult-birth.html

 

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