Preventing Newborn Falls

Photo by Joseph Sacchetti. Photo by Joseph Sacchetti.

An acquaintance of mine once admitted to dropping her newborn baby while feeding her in the middle of the night. At the time I inwardly scoffed—how can someone be that tired, I thought judgmentally. Fast-forward to a few years later when I can now speak as a new mother—and to being that tired.

Sleep deprivation is no joke. And it doesn’t necessarily begin when the baby is born. The last few months of pregnancy and the discomfort that comes with it make for difficult sleep preceding the birth.

Many maternity units now promote “rooming in,” where a newborn baby stays in the mother’s room rather than with the nurses in the nursery. This makes newborn fall prevention an important issue. Take poor sleep in the last months of pregnancy and the physical and mental exhaustion of labor and add pain and limited mobility from the birth itself, especially a C-section birth; large rails on hospital beds making the transfer of one’s baby from bassinet to the mother’s bed difficult; and possible pain meds for mom, and the recipe could spell disaster.

In my case, with an emergency C-section and limited mobility, I found it very hard to pick my baby up from his bassinet and bring him into my hospital bed for a feeding. Luckily my […]

2016-11-21T13:01:48-05:00November 4th, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement|0 Comments
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Women’s Health Week – It’s Your Time

Cycling mother and daughter, Netherlands/via Wikimedia Commons

Women, especially working women with families, often are their own last priority—the job and family come first. This week is the 13th annual National Women’s Health Week, which started on Mother’s Day, May 13, and will last until May 19th. The theme for this year is “It’s Your Time.” And it’s the perfect time for women to stop and take stock of their own health needs. This year’s Women’s Health Week is particularly poignant, coming on the tail of the recent debates about access to birth control on the national stage.

Coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, this special week is meant to bring together health organizations, businesses, government offices, and communities in order to promote women’s health. You can find more information about how to get involved on womenshealth.gov.

Our views on women’s health continue to evolve. For example, menopause: what is a “normal” symptom during menopause? What treatments are available for various symptoms, and what can women do to help themselves? What do we currently know about the effects of certain treatments, and are they worth the possible benefits? Are we overmedicalizing women’s bodies? Or what about pregnant nurses on the job? What might endanger their health or that of their developing babies?

We’d like to offer some of our recent articles on women’s health to help increase awareness of some health […]

2016-11-21T13:10:09-05:00May 16th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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Are Domestic Violence and Pregnancy Preexisting Conditions?

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

Kaiser Health News recently ran a story about an attorney who was denied private insurance coverage based on a “preexisting condition”—that is, treatment she’d received following a domestic abuse incident. A majority of states have passed laws prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on treatment for domestic violence, but  eight states as well as the District of Columbia have no such legislation. It is a challenge to track the occurrence of such denials. Insurers often use alternative ways to find out about a history of domestic abuse. They have been known to search for protective orders at local courthouses, which is public information, and search through medical records for documentation of treatment related to such incidents. 

A bitter irony is that nurses are expected to be aware of and directly question patients about suspected abuse, yet in doing so we could be setting up patients for future loss or denial of coverage. 

Pregnancy, likewise defined as a preexisting condition, can also be used to deny coverage. Health reform bills under consideration would disallow the practice of basing insurance rates on gender, a practice which has in effect discriminated against women, particularly those of child-bearing age. 

The practice of denying private health insurance coverage based on these and other preexisting conditions must stop. As a nurse and a consumer, I believe that everyone should be able to buy health care at a reasonable price. A rate such as $1,000 per month for a family is not affordable. In the end we all pay if people do not have some […]

2016-11-21T13:21:15-05:00November 6th, 2009|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Trauma in Pregnancy: An Expert’s Calm Look at What Nurses Need to Know

PregnantTrauma.

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

In this month’s CE feature on Trauma in Pregnancy, author Laura M. Criddle takes a calm look at a distressing subject. After outlining possible mechanisms of injury, Criddle reminds readers that “trauma care priorities don’t change when the patient is pregnant.” Initial interventions will still focus on the “ABCs”—airway, breathing, and circulation. She also points out that the fetus’s best chance for survival is “vigorous resuscitation of the mother,” since most fetuses will not survive maternal death.

However, the normal changes of pregnancy can affect both the nature of injury and the body’s responses; this has important implications for nursing care. Among Criddle’s key points:

  • Compression and displacement of various organs occur as pregnancy advances. This makes some injuries more likely, others harder to detect.
  • The normal changes of pregnancy can mask the signs of decompensation.
  • Pregnancy and its changes can also make complications after injury more likely.

Criddle provides several examples for each point. She also offers strategies for assessment and interventions for both mother and fetus.

Have you cared for pregnant trauma patients? What was the experience like? Please tell us in the comments.

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2016-11-21T13:21:20-05:00November 3rd, 2009|nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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