An article came out recently, by Sheryl Ubelacker of The Canadian Press, which I believe NICU staff and parents everywhere should read.
It's about Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and their attempt to incorporate family integrated care for their NICU infants.
"Parents have long been encouraged to spend time with their babies in the NICU, but they were typically more observers than participants, often feeling helpless and lost as they sat by their child’s isolette watching every breath, trying to make sense of the monitors and startling at every bell or buzzer around them.
“With family integrated care, we have done something quite different,” explains Dr. Shoo Lee, pediatrician-in-chief and director of the Maternal-Infant Care Research Centre.
“What we’ve done is to say that for all babies in the NICU, the parents should be the primary caregivers, not the nurses. And the nurses are really teachers to the parents.”
The babies’ progress was compared with those whose care was primarily provided by nurses, and Lee says “the results were phenomenal.”
Click here for the article in its entirety, it's a great read.What do you think of the concept?
Trish Ringley is the founder and CEO of Every Tiny Thing. She has been a NICU nurse since 1997, and she's been creating the products and accessories that NICU parents love since 2014. When she's not at work caring for NICU families, she's raising her two teenage kids, gardening, and raising service dog puppies for Canine Companions for Independence.
