Hey there! Welcome to this week’s post! This week has been a lot more inactive in comparison to the past couple weeks.
In the NICU this week, it was slightly difficult finding someone or a group for me to observe because it was a very hectic day where there were many families around. To maintain their privacy and to make sure that I wasn’t invading their personal time and space, I decided to shadow CCN (Continued Care Nursing) once again. I watched two babies have baths, get changed, fed, and wrapped up in the blankets. The patients get baths about every three days to ensure that excessive bathing and exposure doesn’t affect their health. Apparently, in the past, premature babies in the NICU used to be given baths on the daily, which isn’t always the best thing to do for some situations where the patient is extremely premature and skin isn't as strong.
One of the patients that day actually stopped breathing momentarily, not because of any heart or lack of oxygen problems, but rather because the baby had a lot of fluid build-up in the lungs and breathing pipes. The alarm for the system went off repeatedly and nurses rushed to the room. It was slightly intense and crowded, so I mainly watched from afar as the physicians, RT's, and nurses handled the situation within a few minutes. They ended up setting up a machine that would regulate the patient’s breathing so that the baby doesn’t have to forcefully attempt to breathe, as it gets tiring for its tiny body. Basically, it controls the breathing for the baby.
Later on, one of the nurses showed me how a Pyxis station works. The Pyxis MedStation system is an automated medication dispensing system. It helps healthcare providers safely and efficiently dispense medications while offering enterprise-ready integration. The nurse was removing morphine to give to a baby whose parent was a person that took drugs while pregnant.
 |
| An example Pyxis Machine |
Besides that, this week I also conducted and collected responses to a few more interviews, and so far I have about 25. From a quick glance, I can see a few obvious patterns already in the answers and a few interesting differences as well. I’m starting to compile them all together for the results so that I can show different factors such as occupation, age, place of work, or gender to explain why the results of the survey came out in the way that they are.
Anyways, there's only two more weeks are left of the senior project; it’s insane how fast two months have gone by. Thanks for reading the post!
