>Staff needs a big reminder to follow
> policy and procedure.
If you don't follow a policy and procedure having to do with say,
administration of meds, what happens? You get an incident report written
up and it goes in your file. It seems to me that if you violate ANY policy
and procedure, whether about meds, HELLP, or Breastfeeding - you get an
incident report. I think if this is clearly stated and done...people would
learn very swiftly.
I'm not sure if I'd be up for any speaking at this time, depends on what
you want me to speak on. I'm getting very out of touch with day to day in
the hospital. I left UM in 1991 :-( and although I had contact with
hospitals in Detroit via teaching students as maternity instructor, it is
still getting old.
My from-the-outside, looking-in perception at the moment is that with early
discharge moms are unprepared for engorgement and it throws them for a
loop. There is no universal close follow-up by VNA within 2-4 days so BF
is down the tubes by the time they come into the office at one-two weeks.
I perceive that the walk-in clinics connected to Evergreen Hospital is the
way to go. They are nurse run, basically free, as part of maternity care.
Moms come in for weight checks, BF tune-ups, within a day or two of
discharge and of course they are there for moms who run into problems a
little later and ins covers vss. Most babies are in limbo land for that
first mo as far as ins is concerned.
Now I think this could be easily accomodated on the maternity unit. An
empty pt. room(nearest the unit entrance), designated as drop-in room.
Outfitted with a good electronic scale, changing table and a rocking chair
or 2. Small desk and file for the LC info papers. Minimal record keeping,
ie: mom signs in name and address, baby's name and date in a log book,
weight recorded, initialed by staff member of the day who is assigned to
drop-in room. (You'd get one less mother-baby dyad to be drop-in room
person- if it got to be busy, ie:well used, get assigned a 1/2 load of pts
etc. Would depend on how your unit's census runs and volume. At Evergreen
with mega deliveries per year they have 2 FT people.)
I think we need to think outside of the box to accomodate moms/babies and
what needs to happen to encourage BF. I don't think a busy pediatric
office with sick kids present is the place to bring newborn babies and VNA
care is not universal for newborns or cost effective. And universal vss
with LCs isn't really necessary. LCs are for the mother-babies with
complicated problems. It isn't cost effective to use them as basic care.
If moms could get accurate, basic care/info in an easy, inexpensive way,
many LC vss would be averted. The use of hospital walk-in clinics would
make the vss "official", accessible, possibly guarantee that the info is
reliable-accurate and free up HCPs to work with moms and babies that need
more sophisticated help.
That's my "profound" ramble of the day :-) I'm going to send it into
Lactnet and hope it opens up a discussion :-)
Lactnet readers: this is mostly about circumstances as I see them in US.
Sincerely, Pat in SNJ
***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
