Nursery/NICU

-The responsibility of the nursery nurses are to wash and monitor all newborns. They sometimes feed them if the moms don't breast feed or are too tired.
-I Learned how to give a newborn a bath and how to get rid of jaundice in preemies.
-The best thing that happened was a newborn grabbed my finger and cooed at me. It was heart meltingly, dunk you in my coffee, adorable.
-The worst thing was how i just stood around for a while because all the nurses were charting or changing diapers.
-this week was FAIR because i learned some cool stuff from the NICU nurse but it was kinda boring.

The technology i observed was a incubator for a preemie. I also saw a special blue light that got rid of jaundice that requires the baby to wear a little eye mask. I also saw a sound machine that played ocean sounds for the baby.

I did not see any diagnostic procedure. The doctors had not come in to do check ups yet for the baby.

The therapeutic procedure i saw were the blue light to remove jaundice. I also saw a baby have a feeding tube down her nose into her stomach because she couldn't drink formula by herself yet.

I saw jaundice as a disease/disorder. Jaundice is when a newborn has too much bilirubin in their blood and seeing that this baby was premature then she didn't spend enough time with the placenta which removes bilirubin.

I did not observe any medical abbreviations or terminology.

I. Its incredibly quiet in both the Nursery and NICU other than the occasional beep when the babies get cold. All the nurses seem very seasoned and well mannered. They all definitely knew what they were doing. The Nurses were feeding babies, giving them baths, and changing diapers. The technology was this little sticker they stuck on the newborns which monitored their temperature and beep when they got too hot or cold.

II. Everything was very secure from the electrically locked door to the babies ankle bracelets with tracking devices on it. All the nurses worked well together and communicated well. They all knew which babies were which and who had what baby. The therapeutic things were feeding and changing diapers. They also gave baths to get rid of the white gunk from birth.

III. I learned that preemie babies who are born at 32 weeks or under have to stay in the NICU for at least 2 weeks. I also learned that NICU babies have to be able to drink formula and poop before they can leave. The NICU nurse explained to me that in the NICU they make up the schedule depending on how many babies are in there at one time. She said that is they schedule too many people that they'll put people on call.

IV. Overall the Nursery/NICU wasn't that great. I mean the babies were but but they doctors didn't really do anything with them. It was also just way too quiet and calm in there. I need things to be happening and things be moving for me personally. Plus babies kinds freak me out because i'm scared im gonna do something wrong and they're just so fragile and small.