Preemie Home support by RN...Needed Service?

[Ali_G_RN]

Hello everyone,
I am a Registered Nurse and I have been helping families with multiples at home, mostly at night. Several of the families have had preemies who came home on monitors. I would like to offer this service to families more as I believe it is a much needed service, and it seems to have been a huge help for the families I have worked with. I am wondering if you moms out there agree that this is a needed service that is not being offered, or if it is, what does it entail and how do you find this type of service? I have tried to find service providers and have come across many Doula services but not any specializing in this type of thing. If any of you have had a Doula, did she meet your needs? I have found that caring for preemies at home, particularly with feeding problems, monitors, reflux, etc. to be at times vastly different than general term newborn care and have been told by the parents that I have helped that my Nursing (RN) experience has been invaluable. I have gotten great satisfaction helping these families. I'd love any feedback on this as I think I'd like to pursue this full time but only if there is truly a need for it. Thanks so much!

[sbrinton]

I know that the county where we live provides home nursing care to families with preemies when this is needed. Often this is for families where the parents have been trained to do something like use a feeding tube, give meds through an IV, or use a monitor of some sort. The public health nurse will come to provide support, check on the baby, change the IV, etc.

We didn't use this service, but when our son came home from the NICU he was in many ways just like a newborn. He was not medically fragile at that point, even if he was barely 5 pounds and 35 weeks!

I sounds like what you want to do is something like being a highly-skilled postpartum doula. I wonder how it would work as far as insurance or cost. You are sort of in between a home health nurse, a postpartum doula and the public health nurse.

[sunflowers]

I know that nursing care would be a great asset to those familes whose babies come home on oxygen (particularly a vent) or monitors.

I do think it would fall under skilled nursing care rather than doula services. In my area, skilled nursing for vent babies are far and few between, though! Familes are regulaly approved but there are often not enough quality nurses to meet the need.

I don't think I, personally,would have benefitted much from a RN/doula for dd after she came home from the NICU. Most parents seem to gain a world of knowledge about how to care for their children by that point. But then my dd came home wireless. I would probably feel completely different had she come home wired.