Newborn Infant Observation

My first assignment of the day was shadowing the nurses in the newborn nursery. I had the privilege of observing newborn intake assessments. The nurse would enter the room around thirty minutes to an hour after birth to assess the baby. The first task the nurse did was measuring the head and chest circumference of the baby, followed by assessment of the fontanels. The nurses allowed me to participate, repeating what they did as they went through the entire assessment. We assessed the infant’s respirations, lung sounds, and then heart rate. We then auscultated bowel sounds. The nurse instructed that you should always measure temperature and blood pressure last because these would likely upset the infant. We then gave the infants shots, vitamin

I was on the side of the most critical infants. Although I only had about an hour I was able assist the nurse in obtaining some vital signs, changing and feeding a few infants. The most common problem I saw that night was babies born extremely premature. For the most part the infants were stable. Unlike what I had witnessed in the NICU at Forsyth, none of the infants I assisted were on ventilators or TPN. The infant I spent the most time with was now 32 weeks, weighing approximately 5lbs and was on oxygen. He was feeding well, and extremely reactive to the environment around him. His only issues were trouble breathing adequately on his own, and retinopathy of prematurity, ROP. According to KidsHealth, ROP causes abnormal vessels to grow in the retina which could potentially lead to detachment of the retina from the back of the eye and blindness (2016). The abnormal vessels also tend to leak and bleed which can lead to scarring of the retina as well. This is believed to be caused by the disruption of normal vessel development and branching within the eye. Normal blood vessels within the eye branch outward and reach the edges of the retina by eight months. In an extremely premature infant, such as the infant I attended to that was born at 25 weeks, this branching would never have been accomplished normally by that time. There is no way to identify ROP just by nursing assessment alone, because it displays no early signs and symptoms. The only way to detect it is by eye examination from an ophthalmologist (2016). The nurse believed that the infant would require surgery, and this would set him back in recovery. Once general anesthesia is introduced, the infant will likely be placed back on the ventilator and have to be weaned off once again. The priority for this patient once surgery is done to correct the ROP, is maintaining a stable airway and monitoring respiratory