A viewer asked me to expound more on my time working in
the Maternity unit.
Some things to keep in mind when working on
that unit:
- You will admit two patients – the mother and the baby
- The baby’s name in the system will be by their gender and last name (ex. Baby Girl Hernandez or Baby Boy Smith)
- You will place a name alerts on the chart and in the system for babies with the same last name (it doesn’t matter what their gender is, if the last name is the same place that sticker on the chart)
- The babies will have a band on them that is connected to the alarm system, so that if a baby is near is any door it will sound. This is to protect the baby from being kidnapped. Of course it is turned off if the baby is scheduled to leave the floor for a procedure or when being discharged
- You will discharge both mother and baby upon them leaving (unless the baby is not being discharge and instead is being transferred to NICU)
- You will be buzzing in a lot of families, friends, and more onto the unit who want to see the mother and the new baby
- You will interact with outside authorities because you will have some babies born addicted to drugs or HIV positive or other reasons.
- You will see women who had a baby four hours ago and now they are outside smoking a cigarette
- And more…..
Side note: I never worked on the
Mother /Baby unit full-time, I only floated there a few times.