Advances in neonatal care : official journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses
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A term borrowed from emergency and cardiovascular medicine, the phrase "Golden Hour" refers to the first hour of an infant's life following delivery. The impact of implementation of a Golden Hour Protocol in a level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for infants delivered at less than 28 weeks gestation was examined, with a focus on admission temperature, admission glucose, and time to the initiation of an intravenous glucose and amino acid administration. As part of a quality initiative project, data were collected before and after the implementation of the Golden Hour Protocol for infants born at less than 28 weeks gestational age from May 2008 through December 2011. ⋯ There was a statistically significant difference in the incidence of admission glucose greater than 50 mg/dL between the pre- and postprotocol groups (55.7% vs 72%; P = .012). There was a highly statistically significant difference in the number of post-Golden Hour Protocol infants who received an intravenous administration of glucose and amino acids within 1 hour of life compared with the preprotocol group (61.3% vs 7%; P = 0.001). Our results suggest that the implementation of the Golden Hour Protocol can significantly improve the stabilization of infants delivered less than 28 weeks gestation.
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Pain assessment and measurement are the cornerstones of pain management. Pain assessment connotes a comprehensive multidimensional description. Conversely, pain measurement provides a numeric quantitative description of each factor illustrating pain qualities. ⋯ Integration of pain management into daily practice remains problematic. Understanding how each instrument measures infant pain allows clinicians to make better decisions about what instrument to use with which infant and in what circumstances. In addition, novel new measurement techniques need further testing.
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Late-onset sepsis continues to be a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in very low-birth-weight infants. Earlier detection of infection with heart rate variability monitoring through the use of the HeRO monitor has been shown to reduce mortality rate by 22%. This article reviews how HeRO is used to assist in earlier diagnosis and treatment of infection.
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Pediatric palliative care in Portugal is improving, but there is still additional work to do concerning programs or guidelines for this subject. In Portugal, physicians are the stakeholders in the decision-making process with reference to the transition to palliative care in the neonatal intensive care unit, and it was considered very important to raise their awareness and motivation about neonatal palliative care. Our research was based on Catlin and Carter's protocol from 2002 and the main goal was to assess neonatologists' willingness to build a palliative care and end-of-life protocol that could be acceptable nationwide. ⋯ The expert panel was composed of 57 participants who represented 41% of the Portuguese neonatologists. The study was conducted via the Internet, based in a researcher-created private Web site, and e-mail was used for data collection and feedback. Neonatologists agreed on 7 areas: (1) planning (medical education, resources, and local), (2) prenatal palliative care, (3) neonatal palliative care criteria, (4) the parents (presenting neonatal palliative care to parents, including then in the daily care of newborns and in family-centered care), (5) physicians' needs, (6) pain and symptom management, and (7) end-of-life care (withholding/withdrawing ventilation and hydration/nutrition).