Newborn Nursery

… is the closest medicine will ever get to an assembly line. Sure, I have a certain appreciation for how evidence-based newborn medicine is: The NRP algorithm (the process we go through with neonatal resuscitation) is rock-solid. The science is satisfyingly pure physiology. There is no Past Medical History. If the baby so much as blinks at you funny, you simply send it to the NICU for a rule-out sepsis work-up. And the answer to 99% of new parent questions is “Ah, that’s perfectly normal newborn behavior. Your baby’s body is just trying to figure out how to adapt from being in a dark swimming pool to being in the outside world.” … literally, that’s pretty much the stock answer I use for almost any parent question. Sure, I like to change it up a bit sometimes – for newborn congestion I’ll say that it’s the baby’s mucous membranes that are getting used to air instead of water… for erythema toxicarum I’ll say it’s the skin cells… occasionally I’ll have to talk about in utero positioning or birth trauma, sure, but… largely, everyone’s simple. In fact, I’m getting this weird phenomenon where I really enjoy nurses stopping me in the hall to ask me questions. There’s no dread! No sinking stomach feeling! No problem I cannot solve with stock answers! No matter what the RN asks, the answers are always so clear! It’s so different from general peds! It’...
Source: Action Potential - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs