Hey everyone!
This week at the NICU facility I got the chance to shadow an RT (respiratory therapist), a specialized healthcare practitioner trained in pulmonary medicine in order to work therapeutically with patients suffering from various pulmonary issues. In the NICU, the RTs mainly monitor the infants’ breathing or the patterns of the ventilators the babies could be put on. Newborns born prematurely often have breathing problems due to undeveloped lungs but even full-term babies can also develop respiratory issues from a difficult labor and delivery, birth defects, or infection. The RT that I was observing for the day was in charge of the care of multiple babies who were on ventilators for various reasons.
One of the patients had a bone development abnormality that caused the bones in the body to disjointed at points and not in proper shape. I watched as the RT carefully re-positioned and re-taped a breathing tube to the patient’s face as it had been causing minor bruising near the baby’s mouth.
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| Jet Oscillator Machine (a type of ventilator) |
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| A newborn with a breathing tube |
Another baby that the RT who I was observing was in charge of was a baby born at almost 24 weeks gestation. In other words, the baby was born by emergency cesarean section 16 weeks (4 months) prior to full term! Often, babies that born at 22 to 23 weeks do not survive after birth, so it was a remarkable sight to see this baby. Many of the nurses came and went to look at this baby because it's not often that a baby so small is seen. So tiny that the baby could completely fit in one hand, it had to rely on a breathing tube as the lungs were too undeveloped to support the body.
As the infant’s eyes were still fused shut, hair covered the head from the back of the scalp down to the eyes, skin was so delicate that touching it normally would leave a mark or bruise, the nurses handled the baby with extreme delicacy. The RT spent about a half hour changing the breathing tube to ensure that the tape or weight of the tube doesn’t significantly affect the baby’s skin. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned a baby that was born 14 weeks premature; however this baby was so much more smaller than one I saw earlier. In the time that the breathing tube was being replaced, the baby also had an x-ray done so that the doctor could see how much of the chest and abdomen had developed internally.
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| A size comparison of a baby at 24 weeks gestation and a hand |
In Pediatric Surgery this week, I spent most of the time observing at the clinic. I sat at the front desk for a few hours observing what it’s like to be part of PFS, patient financial services. When you go to a doctor’s appointment, these are the people that check you in, answer phone calls, manage all the paperwork and insurance information, etc. I also observed clinic appointments for a few hours as I had in previous weeks and interacted with patient families.
I managed to also get more survey interviews done this week, and I’m hoping that by the time this project ends I have more than enough to make an accurate analysis!
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the post and I'll see you next week! :)
