...In the medical field there are many types of careers. One specific career is a NICU nurse. NICU stands for neonatal intensive care unit, or it is know as intensive care nursery (ICN.) A neonatal nurse is responsible for the care of newborn infants born with a variety of problems. These problems could be anything ranging from prematurity, birth defects, infection, cardiac malformations, and surgical problems. Neonatal nurse generally care for those infants who experience problems shortly after birth, or infants who experience long-term problems related to their prematurity or illness after birth. The type of work is divided into three levels. Level one is for the healthy newborns. Most neonatal nurses do not work in this level very long as most of the healthy newborns stay in the room with the mother. Level two is for prematurely delivered newborns or those with an illness that requires immediate care. These newborns commonly need special care, such as intravenous fluid administration, specialize feeding, oxygen therapy, and medications. They usually need time to mature and grow before being discharged....
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...placed in the lives of their patients to improve their health and to utilize a series of diagnoses to treat their specific health deficits. Although the road through medical school, board exams, and residency is long and difficult—the resulting career is worth it. Previous to my research, I knew the basics about the career field of...
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...After I graduate this May I pan on taking summer classes at Columbus state, while working so I can save/ earn money for college. I am committed to play soccer at the university of charleston next August. My plan as of now is to go to UC to study to be a neonatal nurse practitioner. As a senior, I took four classes at Marion Tech this year and earned 12 credit hours. This summer I plan on taking 6 prerequisites at Columbus state, so once I get to Charleston, I get into the nursing program as a freshman. I was born a month early. When I came out of my mothers stomach I weighed 3 lbs 5 ounces, I was took straight to intensive care, where they were not sure if i was going to make it.. barely breathing. If it wasnt for the neonatal nurses and doctors, I most likely would not be here today. I just feel the need to give back and help save newborn babies lives and take care of them. Neonatal nursing allows you to make a difference in the lives of infants and their families which is my goal. Many neonatal nurses continue to hear from families and infants they have cared for throughout their lives. Neonatal nurses are the voice for the smallest and sickest of patients that have no voice. Ive been told multiple times that the neonatal nursing field is a very competitive field to get in to. I'm always given the same “not going to happen” look followed by, “well, everyone wants to work with the babies.” I smile and agree with them but inside it just makes me want to work even harder to...
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...4th 2013 Neonatal Intensive Care Have you ever walked by a nursery at the hospital and saw the babies lying there? Have you ever wondered who is responsible for being the caregiver for the babies while in the hospital? The neonatal intensive care unit is responsible for that. Neonatal intensive care is one of the most crucial jobs in the nursing field due to its roles, requirements, intensive challenges and rewards that it provides. Neonatal nurses have the responsibility of providing the care for babies when they are first born. Neonatal nursing has many education requirements, an outstanding job outlook, as well as great benefits. Neonatal nurses care for newborns for the first 28 days of the babies’ lives, the children’s most helpless stage. Nurses specialized in this field are required to focus not just on healthy infants, but also on ill or premature babies. They monitor the condition of babies, check for signs of distress, and manage medication when necessary. Neonatal nurses are also responsible for providing all kinds of basic care, like changing diapers and feeding babies. “A neonatal intensive care unit often caters to babies with complex medical needs. Invasive treatments like ventilation, repeated blood sampling, invasive catheters are common. Caring for very sick neonates is compounded by the uncertainty that surrounds the immediate outcomes (survival) and the long-term outcomes (disabilities, quality of life and the need for continual medical care including...
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...All of my life I have known that I wanted to be in the medical field. Not until this year have I known exactly what I wanted to be. Job shadowing a Registered Nurse (RN) made it clear to me what my calling is. I want to be Neonatal Nurse Practitioner. Neonatal means relating to newborn children and my love for babies helped me narrow down what type of nurse I would like to be. At first I decided to be a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner but I changed it to Neonatal because I love babies more than any other Pediatric age. Nurse practitioners(NPs) are often called Advanced Practice Registered Nurses(APRNs). Some jobs APRNs have includes; take a record patients’ medical histories and symptoms, perform physical exams and observe patients,...
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...If I could choose one specific Health Care Occupation to work in my preferences would be to work as a Neonatologist. The reason I chose that profession is strictly because of my 4-year old son, who was born at 28 weeks. From the time my son was born until the time he was discharged he remained in the NICU with many different Neonatologists. The desire for me to become a Neonatologist grew stronger and stronger as my son’s stay grew longer. Those doctors had a very important job to perform and they did a tremendous job while my son was present. Neonatal nursing is a specialist of nursing that deals with infants who are born with a variety of problems ranging from: prematurity at birth, surgical problems, infection, birth defects, and cardiac...
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...goals that I want to accomplish before my career is over. My first short term goal I want to accomplish is being a staff nurse III, in my unit. A staff nurse III position is considered a nurse who is known as a nurse leader in the unit. A staff nurse III, is the resource person in the unit. They are required to keep staff up to date with new information and participate in quality improvement projects. The next step in my professional goal is to become a clinical instructor. Clinical instructors are professionals that teach nursing students to apply knowledge in clinical settings (Koharchik & Jakub, 2014). A long term goal I want to pursue is becoming an neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP). NNP is an advanced nursing practice that utilizes extended and expanded skills, experience and knowledge in assessment, planning, implementation, diagnosis, and evaluation of the care required for neonates (Freed, Dunham, Martyn, Nantais-Smith, & Moran, 2013 ). I enjoy teaching, and the professional goals that I have chosen will give me the opportunity to teach others in a health care setting. Strengths, Ethics, & Values There were a couple reasons that I decided to return to school. First, I wanted to show my son that education is very important. If he wants to have a career, he needs a college degree. I want to teach him that knowledge is key to success. Second, I have been a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse for seventeen years...
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...allows instant retrieval of medical information and an access to a greater number of people. This “easy access” of patient information has made inter departmental referral of patients quicker and more efficient. The downside of this technology is that it does not have an incorporated internal monitoring system for patient database information retrieval. Sara has worked full-time at Memorial Hospital in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit since she graduated five years ago. She loves her job, is very personable, and eventually would like to become nurse manager of the department one day. Jan is a new hire at Memorial Hospital, but has worked at another hospital in the area for the past five years. Jan now works in the Oncology Cancer Care Center which is located in another building on the Memorial Hospital campus. Sara and Jan sometimes will have lunch in the cafeteria when they are scheduled on same shifts. Jan’s friend and neighbor, Kelly, just had her second baby at Memorial Hospital. Kelly was released, but the baby has yet to go home and is in the neonatal intensive care unit. Jan has not seen or been able to get a hold of Kelly and is very curious about the baby and his/her condition. While having lunch the next day, Jan runs into Sara and asks about the baby. Sara is aware of hospital policy and patient confidentiality and she tells Jan she is not able to talk about the baby’s condition. Jan is persistent and asks if she can just look at the...
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...the NCLEX review questions, and I even got giddy when it was my turn during clinical to administer IV medications. Fast forward a few years and I’m working in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and still get that heart stopping thrill moments before a 24 week delivery. I drive to work every day with excitement of the unknown. I can’t wait to find out what is awaiting me behind those locked doors. I rejoice in the happy moments with parents as well as mourn with them when their baby has passed away. These tiny miracles have taught me more over the last couple years than I could have ever imagined, they are unpredictable, strong, resilient, courageous, determined, and inspiring. Their undeniable strength has taught me to be proud of my own strength and accomplishments. They inspire me to be the best I can be. Their inspiration puts life into perspective - whenever I sweat the small stuff all I have to do is look at the journey of a NICU baby and it shows me that the small things in life do not matter....
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...I scampered through the hallways at Dartmouth Hospital searching for a sign to direct me towards the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). My heart was racing knowing that I was walking into the experience completely empty handed. When I found the unit, I walked into a huddle of nurses going over the day’s census. I was assigned to a nurse who had the most severe and critical case on the unit. This was a full term baby, 40 weeks and 1 day. Though the charting from the hospital where he was born was not completely clear, it is said that the fetus was experiencing bradycardia for 17 minutes at 50bpm. This otherwise known low-risk pregnancy quickly turned into a STAT C-section. When the baby was delivered its ABGAR scores were 0, 0, and 3. The baby was intubated, put on a cardiac and brain monitor, and rushed to the Dartmouth NICU. An umbilical line and a venous line were all drawn to gain access to the circulation to hydrate and nourish. An arterial line was drawn because frequent blood gases were needed. As you can imagine, like I had, this baby looked like an experimental nursing tool. When I first saw him he looked as though he was fake. He had lines and tubes going in and coming out of every possible place on the body. He was hooked up to the EEG monitor to record his brain waves because it had been showing signs of abscence seizures. The baby had no swallowing reflex so frequent suctioning was crucial. When I arrived I was told that the baby would be going down to get an...
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...Math might not be the first skill that comes to mind when you think about a nursing career. Math is a vital part of nursing and is used in a variety of ways throughout the average day. Nurses must obtain reliable data and calculations to prevent, diagnose and treat medical problems. A clear understanding of fractions, ratios and algebraic equations and the metric system is essential to keeping patients healthy and alive. Vital signs -- temperature, pulse rate, breathing rate and blood pressure -- serve as our bodies’ dashboard indicators. Nurses must use math when they check a person’s vital signs. One important vital sign is body temperature. The normal body temperature for a person is about 98.6 degrees. A high temperature tells a nurse that a person has a fever. When you have a fever, it often means that your body is fighting some sort of infection or illness. One of nurse’s most important jobs is to make sure to give the right doses of medication to the right patient. The nurse reads a patients chart, which contains the doctor’s orders, including what kind of medicine to give and how much to give. A nurse must make sure to read the name of the medication correctly as well as the strength of the medicine the doctor has ordered. This is important particularly if the conditions for determining the dose depend on the patient's weight, blood pressure or glucose level. Medication strengths can be measured in metric units, such as grams, milligrams, liters, and milliliters. ...
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...A few years ago I was scrolling through Facebook, I came across a video of a baby who was not breathing after birth and found myself, like one of many in the social media masses captivated, watching to see if the baby was going to make it. Seeing the baby lay there lifeless and limp was heartbreaking, but watching the Neonatal Nurse revive the baby ignited in me a need to do the same, save infants. Infants by their very nature are helpless, incapable of doing anything for themselves, including increasing their health. Infants are dependant on someone to provide what they need. Whether it is their mother feeding them or a nurse pushing life-saving medications, they are reliant on those around them to make sure their needs are met. I yearn to...
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...| | Every year over 14 million babies around the world are born prematurely, out of these over one million die due to premature birth complications; it is the job of neonatologists to keep this from happening. Neonatology is the field of medicine dedicated solely to the care of preterm or babies that are born with critical illnesses. The training of a neonatologist consists of four years of medical school, three years of general pediatrics, and an additional three years of training in intensive care of newborns. In addition to the training a neonatologist requires a certification from the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) and the sub-board of Neonatal-Prenatal Medicine (S-NPM). Neonatologists are often faced with diagnosing newborns with complications such as breathing disorders, infections, injuries, and other birth defects. Once a diagnosis is done the next step is coordinating care and treatment. Some newborns can often suffer from injuries during childbirth, these can sometimes require surgeries that the neonatologists are responsible for schedule, attend, and sometimes even perform. They are also responsible for making sure that the newborns receive proper nutrition as well as following up and checking on growth and healing. Sometimes neonatologists are required to be present at the time of birth to assist with the delivery. In these cases the obstetrician is aware of the baby’s defects and consults with the neonatologists throughout the pregnancy to assure the newborn’s...
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...POVERTY AND HEALTHCARE by Taylor Alexandra Bennett Did you know that the infant mortality rate is significantly higher for poor African Americans? In that in third world countries, such as Haiti and Liberia, the rate of death for infants far exceeds those in the poorest communities in the United States? A few years ago, I had an opportunity to visit a neonatal intensive care unit with my mother. On that day, I saw several newborns literally fighting for their lives. Though I was emotional, one of the nurses told me that while their medical conditions were acute, the vast majority would survive. I’ve also visited inner city health clinics. I witnessed expecting mothers smoking cigarettes outside the clinic doors (I wondered if their children were born unhealthy, would they get the same neonatal treatment), an elder couple who was barely able to walk and a cattle-call operation where the concept of bedside manners did not exist. This tale of two cities was intriguing and disturbing to me. The notion that affluence could buy life, or a longer or healthier life, seemed at odds with my core values. The more I studied, the more disturbed I became when I uncovered data that suggested that being born poor, and especially poor and black, was sufficient to determine whether you died or lived as an infant. How is something as fundamental as medical treatment, and by association life or the quality of life, based on socio-economic factors. Of course, there is...
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...When going into nursing there are so many fields to consider. Some of them are: Cardiac Nursing, Case Management Nursing, Dialysis Nursing, Emergency and Trauma Nursing, Forensic Nursing, Genetics Nursing, Medical-Surgical Nursing, Midwifery, Neonatal Nursing, Orthopedic Nursing, Pediatric Nursing and many more. There are a range of education options to become a RN (Registered Nurse). There are some rare hospitals that offer a 3 year diploma, but most Registered Nurses acquire associates or a bachelor’s Degree. There are multiple steps to becoming a Registered Nurse. The first is having a High School Diploma; having a high school education is necessary because nursing requires the knowledge of biology, mathematics, and English. The second major step is to obtain an Associates or Bachelor’s Degree....
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