The Neonatal History

The newborn medical history has three key components: 1. Maternal and paternal medical and genetic history2. Maternal past obstetric history3. Current antepartum and intrapartum obstetric history   The mother’s medical history includes chronic medical conditions, medications taken during pregnancy, unusual dietary habits, smoking history, occupational exposure...

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The Newborn Infant

The newborn period is defined as the first 28 days of life. In practice, however, sick or very immature infants may require neonatal care for many months. There are three levels of newborn care. Level 1 refers to basic care of well newborns of 35 weeks’ gestation or more, neonatal resuscitation, and stabilization prior to transport. Level 2 refers to specialty neonatal care...

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Care of the Well Neonate

The primary responsibility of the Level 1 nursery is care of the well neonate—promoting mother-infant bonding, establishing feeding, and teaching the basics of newborn care. Staff must monitor infants for signs and symptoms of illness, including temperature instability, change in activity, refusal to feed, pallor, cyanosis, early or excessive jaundice, tachypnea, respiratory...

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The Healthcare Industry Situation

The healthcare industry is in a period of transformation being driven by at least four converging factors: (1) the recognition of serious gaps in the safety and quality of care we provide (and receive), (2) the unsustainable increases in the cost of care as a percent of the national economy, (3) the aging of the population, and (4) the emerging role of healthcare information...

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Advancing the Quality and Safety of Care

While the history of the patient safety movement can be traced back to Hippocrates’ famous dictum primum non nocere some 2500 years ago, the more modern safety effort was galvanized by the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 landmark report To Err Is Human. The most quoted statistic from this report, that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of medical...

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