Reducing amount of time babies and mothers are separated when receiving IV Antibiotics on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Background & Problem

Babies are spending on average 40 minutes being separated from their mothers, whilst receiving antibiotics on NICU. Currently they leave the maternity ward, go to a different level in the building to go to NICU.

Often their mother doesn’t attend with them. There were significant delays found in trying to communicate with the maternity health care assistances to come and collect the baby and return them to the maternity ward.

One of the key factors was that there were no set times for antibiotics to be given. This lead to unpredictability of when the babies would be attending NICU to have their antibiotics.

Research has shown that it isn’t good for mothers and babies to be separated, babies can’t feed, they drop their blood sugars easily, become cold, it can affect bonding, cause anxiety and stress to mum and baby.

Aim

To reduce the length of time by 10 minutes for babies who are being separated from their mothers, whilst receiving antibiotics on NICU.

Aims refocus after initial results from walkie talkies: Implement a NICU in reach team on the 16th April. These nurses will go to the maternity ward and administer the antibiotics at set times to eliminate baby and mum being separated.

Method

Introduce walkie talkie system and measured the reduction in waiting times and impact on staff experience and workload pressures.

Following a review of initial improvements a second stage was decided on. This involved liaising with pharmacy to give set timings for IV antibiotic. This has allowed us to implement a NICU in-reach service where 2 NICU nurses are allocated to go to the maternity ward at set times to administer the antibiotics at the babies bedside.

Results

Initial results from walkie talkie show a positive effect on waiting times. Staff feel it has a significant improvement on waiting times.

Implications

Second stage – NICU In reach service once fully implemented will remove the need for babies to be separated from their mothers at all.