Our sick baby ward (like a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit -without the technology) was designed to hold 12 babies maximum. Two weeks ago we squeezed in 19, it was unbelievable. There was no room to move, everywhere you looked it there was either an isolette or a bassinet. All week we had been approaching our limit and then on Thursday night there was a baby explosion. We hovered abound 16 babies, hoping no more preemies were born but then it seemed our luck ran out; one set of twins and a single preemie.
When I review our trends, we appear to be having the same number of births at the hospital but the number of premature babies is higher. We average about 200 deliveries a month and for March we are right on track. I don’t know what’s in the water but things on the maternity ward and in the sick baby ward are insane.
The staff has been amazing! A few days ago we identified an overflow space –a large storage room incase we needed it. Thankfully the room is just down the hall from the current space. Thursday late morning, the facilities staff moved everything out of the storage room, added a few more outlets and the housekeeping staff came by to clean. Shortly after 6pm and we shifted five babies over.
Having such a quick change in our census made a minor staffing problem on the ward to a major staffing problem. Typically we staff two nurses in the sick baby ward, which by western standards we should staff more. This was the staffing plan I inherited and since I have arrived we have been looking for ways to have a better nurse to patient ratio. But I am having little success in hiring someone who wants to work in this ward. Thankfully the staff volunteered and everyone picked up some overtime during this week.
Thankfully, with the overcrowding there were no negative outcomes. We did not see any baby develop an infection and the one baby who passed away had a cardiac defect that we could not repair. It was a true miracle.
The overflow space was open for a week and now we are back to our “normal” 10 babies –THANK GOD!!
