Advances in neonatal care : official journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses
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This study was conducted to assess whether neonatal nurses who care for dying infants could be assisted in their knowledge and comfort via an educational intervention provided by hospital ethics committee members and hospice specialists. ⋯ Education by hospice experts in the NICU can assist nurses' comfort with care of the dying infant. In addition, ongoing support is highly desirable for all staff participating in such care. The authors suggest incident debriefings from outside experts, debriefing after each infant's death, multidisciplinary meetings for the whole team, and having sessions of lessons learned on infant death cases.
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Hypothermia is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in infants; therefore, maintaining normal body temperatures in the delivery room is crucial. An understanding of how infants produce heat and what can be done to maintain normal body temperatures in full-term and preterm infants is essential for the preservation of thermal stability in this population. This article reviews the consequences of hypothermia, mechanisms of heat exchange and heat production in full-term and low birth-weight infants, and discusses interventions in the delivery room to alleviate hypothermia.