Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) is the withdrawing process that occurs in the postnatal life of newborns after being born to drug addicted mothers. Heroin, codeine, oxycodone, methadone and buprenorphine are opiates and narcotics that are commonly abused throughout pregnancy. Symptoms that an infant may exhibit within the first 24-72 hours of life are: hyperirritability, excessive sucking, inconsolable crying, sweating, diarrhea, sneezing (3-4 times within 30 minutes), tremors/seizures, poor feeding/regurgitation and mottling of the skin.

The Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, (AWOHNN), convene on an annual basis nationally and provide monthly webinars on various topics. The organization is subcategorized into multiple chapters within each of the 50 states, in which Pennsylvania has six divisions. “Care of Newborns Prenatally Exposed to Opiates” has been a webinar within the last year based on AWOHNN’s webinar calendar. I chose this committee based on their mission statement of improving and promoting the health of women and infants to support the nursing profession through research and education.

The name of the journal published by AWOHNN is the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic and Neonatal Nursing (JOGNN). My research was done through CINAHL under Drexel’s library resource and by using the keywords of “neonatal abstinence syndrome” and the journal, JOGNN. At first it was challenging to find an organization with published peer-reviewed articles, but after further investigation of neonatal networks and their websites, the articles became more clear and concise. There are acknowledgements to the editor of this article, Lee T. Pittman, but no credentials were mentioned.

I researched the last six issues of JOGNN