MCN. The American journal of maternal child nursing
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MCN Am J Matern Child Nurs · Jan 2005
ReviewMother-infant co-sleeping: understanding the debate and maximizing infant safety.
Mother-infant co-sleeping is debated fervently in the research literature. While studies abound, there is no precise answer to this conundrum, and parents continue to ask nurses for their best opinions about the safety of co-sleeping. The puzzling results of these studies have occurred partly because of: (1) retrospective study designs, (2) lack of control over covariables, (3) misclassification of infant deaths, and (4) unknown prevalence of co-sleeping practices. This article describes the salient issues nurses need to understand in the mother-infant co-sleeping debate, and suggests ways that nurses can help parents to modify risk factors and safety measures if they desire co-sleeping.
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To describe the experience of grandmothers who are parenting their grandchildren, and determine the amount of caregiver burden felt by the grandmothers. ⋯ This study demonstrated that the well being of the grandmother and grandchild are both linked to good physical health. Thus, indicators of poor health for both grandchild and grandmother must be identified early. Grandmothers in this study were surprised at how much had changed in every aspect of child health since they had raised their own children. Nurses working with grandmothers who have custody of grandchildren should understand the dynamics of the relationship, the possibility of caregiver burden, provide anticipatory guidance about the changes in child care and child healthcare in the 21st century, and help link grandmothers who have little support to community programs.
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MCN Am J Matern Child Nurs · May 2004
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialThe efficacy of facilitated tucking for relieving procedural pain of endotracheal suctioning in very low birthweight infants.
This study compared the efficacy of a behavioral pain reducing intervention (facilitated tucking) with standard neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) care for decreasing procedural pain (endotracheal suctioning) in very low birthweight (VLBW) infants. ⋯ Facilitated tucking is a developmentally sensitive, nonpharmacological comfort measure that can relieve procedural pain in VLBW infants. Nurses need to be increasingly aware of infant pain during daily care taking, and to use validated pain assessment instruments. Further clinical research on individual pain assessment is needed for better understanding of the quality and significance of pain for each infant, and the factors that affect pain expression.
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Unfortunately the history of pain management in infant care has included decades of inadequate analgesia for a wide range of medical procedures, including major surgery. This was justified in part on fear of drug and analgesic risks to the infant, as well as the commonly held belief that infants do not respond to, or remember, painful experiences. Today we understand that infant pain is encoded into observable manifestations through which an infant communicates behavioral and physiological changes such as altered vital signs, characteristic cries, and facial expressions. The purposes of this article are to (1) describe infants' physiological and behavioral responses to pain and its adverse effects, (2) review pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic infant pain management modalities and reliable pain assessment tools for use in clinical practice, and (3) educate healthcare professionals about the importance of assessment and management of infant pain.