It's About Time
Finally! I was waiting to visit this department for almost 3 weeks! I shadowed in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) today, and it was just as amazing as I remember it from last summer. Similar to RBC 4 which I wrote about a few days ago, the NICU is where the babies start. Once they are born, they are sent up in order to provide the premature baby with the best chance possible. I got to spend 3 days in the NICU: Thursday and Friday with RN's (registered nurses) and Monday with NP's (nurse practitioners). The RN's spend the most time with the patients and their families. They are the ones at the bedside every morning and night helping to keep the patient stable and increasingly healthy. At the beginning of their shifts, the RN's do the morning assessments, which consist of weighing, feeding, measuring the head and abdomen circumference, and cleaning the patient. It's almost like taking care of your own child...except there's more than on. Most RN's have 2-3 patients, so their days are kept very busy. After morning assessments and rounds with the doctors, it's time to chart...ugh. That is the least appealing part about the NICU. The premature babies require charting every 30 minutes, so it is very hard to keep up with it while also taking care of multiple patients. However, it is a very important part. The nurses always say, "if you didn't chart it, then you didn't do it." Charting is the only way other doctors and nurses know what has been done, what needs to be done, and if there are any changes about the baby. Some days can seem quite slow for me because the patients are recovering and doing well, so the nurse charts and I watch her chart. However, most days are fairly busy. One day, several babies were being extubated (removal of a breathing tube from the patient's trachea/windpipe). So many nurses and respiratory therapist were running back and forth from room to room in order to get them all done.
On Monday, I was with several NP's for the entire day. Most NP's are older because they have to work at RN's and then go back to school. They are more like the hands-on supervisors of the floor. Instead of having 2-3 patients and always being at the bedside like the RN's, the NP's look after all the patients, but 2-3 of them are their primaries. So they know at least a little bit about each patient, and everything about their 2-3. Also, many nurses choose to become NP's because they hours are more suited for family life. So my day started off going on morning rounds and listening to them and the doctors come up with each patient's plan for the day - boost meds, lower oxygen levels, discharge, etc - which took about 2 hours. After lunch, I watched one of the NP's take blood in order to run some tests to find out if the baby had an infection. Most people would think that the baby not crying was a good thing because that means it didn't hurt them. Actually, it is very concerning because it most likely means that there is something neurologically wrong with the baby. Afterwards, I got to sit down with one of the NP's and ask her some questions about the NICU and her job specifically.
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