Work Through Possible Comparison Of Babies, Progression And Regression

Throughout my time on the Mother Baby Care Unit, I have faced many instances in which I have been able to reflect on both my patients and the care that I was providing them. One situation in particular that I found myself critically reflecting upon involved a new mother who was feeling slightly stressed about being discharged as her newborn son would not be going home with her. For confidentiality reasons, this patient will be given the pseudonym of Kayla for the remainder of this reflection.

Jacobs, E. E., Masson, R. L., Harvill, R. L., & Schimmel, C. J. (2012). Group counseling: Strategies and skills (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Purpose of the group counseling varies from group to group. It can be therapeutic, educational, or helping people to make fundamental changes in their way of thinking, feeling and behaving (Corey, 2004, p. 7). Group counseling/therapy has the advantage of being more effective than individual therapy because, it more closely stimulates social interactions and interpersonal communication patterns than does individual counseling (Kottler, 2004, p. 260). The techniques and strategies use in group counseling are to help resolve members’ interpersonal conflict, promote greater self-awareness and insight, and help them work to eliminate their self-defeating

There are more than 70% of premature babies that are born between 34 and 36 weeks gestation a year. When a baby is born early, or born with birth defects, the Neonatal Intensive Care unit is its first home. The nurse’s in the NICU have the difficult job of preparing baby’s and parents for a health life together. A baby who has been put into the NICU will stay there until it is healthy enough to go home.

For any mother the birth of a newborn child can be a challenging experience. As nurses it is part of our job to ensure their experience is positive. We can help do this by providing the information they will need to affective care for their newborn. This information includes topics such as, breastfeeding, jaundice, when to call your doctor and even how to put your baby to sleep. When the parents have an understanding of these topics before discharge it can largely reduce their natural anxiety accompanied with the transition to parenthood. Health teaching for new parents is seen as such an important aspect of care on post-partum floors it is actually a necessary component that needs to be covered before the hospital can discharge the

Parents and children will be divided into groups and on occasion join together for group sessions (“Strengthening Families Program”, n.d.). The age of the children are broken down into 4 groups consisting of: pre-school 3-5 years, elementary school 6-11 years, junior high 10-14 years, early teens and high school 12-16 years (“Strengthening Families Program”, n.d.). The group of children that I will be facilitating is the early teens and high school. The outlines for the sessions are as follows: session 1: getting started and dreams, session 2: speaking and listening, session 3: staying cool in conflicts, session 4: being who you want to be, session 5: speaking for yourself, session 6: speaking up in your family, session 7: handling peer pressure and temptation, session 8: alcohol and drugs, session 9: problem Solving, session 10: friends dating and sexuality, session 11: managing emotions, session 12: handling criticism, session 13: coping with anger, and session 14: resources, review and

To help prevent this issue I have created a program for the Fairfax hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to facilitate the bond between mother and child while both are recovering and being cared for. The pilot program called “rooming-in” allows mother and child to be on the same private room where other family can also stay. The room will be designed to give maximum support to both mother and baby by having all resources in room as well as a private team of nurses.

Adequate discharge instructions are essential before releasing a patient from the hospital. Inadequate instructions could lead to hospital readmissions, adverse events after leaving the hospital, misuse of medical equipment or medicine, failure to follow-up with providers, and can increase the cost to the patient in the end. This is no different in the postpartum period. New mothers and fathers are expected to leave the hospital knowing everything about taking care of a newborn, and these hospital stays keep getting shorter. In the Mercy Ardmore facility, mothers and babies are discharged in 24 hours after a vaginal delivery and 48 hours after a cesarean section, as long as there are no medical complications. This leaves little time to teach new parents all there is to know about newborn

Preterm birth can be a devastating experience not only for the mother, but also for the child. This issue has plagued the United States and other countries for many years, and no concrete evidence have been found to tell us why preterm birth occurs. One in eight babies in the United States is born premature each year. The impact of social support on the psychological well-being, attitudes, and behavior of parents is rapidly becoming a major issue. It is becoming more and more difficult for mothers to cope with the long-term and short-term effects of premature birth. These parents’ attitude and behavior can have both a direct and indirect effect on the child's

The neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, can often be the first “home” of a premature baby. For this baby, there are more developmental marks that become much harder to achieve, compared to a full term infant. In the neonatal intensive care unit, babies often are placed on or in machines to help them finish developing what would normally be developed in the womb. Due to these circumstances, what are some of the affects on the development of a preterm infant when they stay in the neonatal intensive care unit? How does being in the neonatal intensive care unit affect bonding between mother and child? How does a child being in the neonatal intensive care unit affect the parents, especially the mother? What are the best methods to help with the

The goal is to increase our HCAPHS scores. To achieve this goal, the unit will implement the Perinatal Quality Collaborative of North Carolina (PQCNC) survey “How’s your Baby” on the unit at discharge. This is an anonymous survey for parents developed by PQCNC to assess patient care and readiness for discharge. A committee of three to four nurses, as part of a green belt project to revamp the unit’s discharge process, will take charge of the “How’s your Baby” initiative for the unit. The discharge committee will make sure that information on “How’s your Baby” is in the discharge packets and provide follow up with families once the infant is discharged from the hospital. The committee will provide education on the “How’s your Baby” initiative during staff meeting and provide feedback for staff on the

Group counseling not only allows for members to learn from their therapist, it also allows for them to learn from personal experiences of other members and to gain insights and ideas on the issues they are confronting. Group counseling also helps in improving social skills among the members as they are able to interact freely in and out of the group. This way members can be more confident and open to interactions during the sessions. Group therapy influences growth and change to those involved. Also, it increases their self-awareness and enables them to gain sustenance from each other. Group counseling is also favorable to the therapist as they are able to gain faster and more efficient results for their members by counseling them simultaneously rather than one at a time. Jacobs, Mason, Harvill and Schimmel (2012) describe group counseling

The nurse must be mindful of each intervention initiated and the possible benefits of the intervention against its potential harmful effects for both mother and fetus. Not providing basic comfort measures for the mother can cause serious physical and emotional problems and could lead to possible fatigue and feelings of failure from the mother. The priority of this nursing intervention is to provide the mother and fetus with the least discomfort as possible and

Patient’s in the NICU are considered to be very tiny and fragile and immunocompromised due to their immature organ systems which can lead to many dangerous medical problems. Patricia W. Stone states “maintaining a safe environment reflects a level of compassion and vigilance for patient welfare that is as important as any other aspect of competent health care” (Stone, 2008). The patient’s safety should always be a top concerned for a nurse because in a health care facility the purpose is to heal the patient and get them on the road to recovery. Nurses must learn from the errors of the past and use their knowledge to improve the quality of nursing to the patients to ensure if errors do happen again that the use of evidence-based practices are put into place to improve their outcomes. According to Higher Quality of Care and Patient Safety, “Registered Nurses (RNs) are instrumental in achieving multiple care goals, including promoting infant health and clinical stability, maintaining the integrity and cleanliness of central catheters, and preparing families for their role in infant care and successful transition it home” (Lake, 2016). Nurses are reasonable for the education of the families of the patients to ensure that the best quality of care for the patient is maintained outside the hospital to ensure the best medical outcome for the infants.

Nurses working within the neonatal unit require a particular set of skills to adequately fulfil their roles and responsibilities within this fragile setting. The role of a neonatal nurse is to provide intensive nursing care to an infant who has inherited complications at birth due to varied reasons (Tubs-Colley, Pickler, Younger, & Mark, 2015). These complications often manifest as undeveloped internal organs that make simple bodily functions such as breathing and regulating body temperature incredibly difficult. The neonatal nurse provides close monitoring and extremely individualized care per patient to stabilise and further develop these body systems artificially post-uterine (Drozdowicz & Dillard, 2014).