I work at a small community hospital. We average about 800 births a year.   
We are a low risk OB unit and all of our sick babies are transferred out.  
We rarely have a baby stay after mom is discharged. I am now looking to 
update my policy on breastmilk storage. I have searched the archives as 
well as many other sources and I am comming up short!

I am looking for any "Jacho" friendly guidelines appropriate for the unit I 
work at and it seems that there really none.

I know that breastmilk needs to be at certain temperatures. But apart from 
that,  I can not find any real guidelines.  I have already reviewed the 
guidelines for milk banks 

Does the milk need to be in a refrigerator dedicated yo milk storage only?  
Does there need to be a "biohazard" sticker on the frige (one hospital 
poicly I ran across stated this)? 

We currently have small apartment size refrigerator units in all the 
patient rooms, but the temperature is not monitored....this is where we 
have been storing the milk for inpatient dyads...I realize this probably is 
not per guidleines. The director of the unit is not interested in daily 
temperature monitoring of those refrigerators.  

For the baby whose mother has been discharged, we are storing the milk in 
the medication frige, but at least one source stated this was not correct 
for infection control reasons.  

Does anyone have a policy they are will to share or perhaps point me in the 
right direction if there are more specific quidlines that I have been 
unable to find that would be approprite for a unit like mine.

Thanks

Lori Peters RN(C)/IBCLC
United Hospital System, Kenosha Campus
Kenosha WI

  

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