Prenatal and neonatal infant care has long been known to be vitally important for healthy baby development. Studies have proven this fact repeatedly, and the nursing profession has responded by designating a specialty, the neonatal nurse, that focuses its efforts on the newborn.
Neonatal nurse professionals work with newborns that are born early or with serious illnesses, helping to stabilize the new infants and ensure that their lives get off to the healthiest start possible.
The challenges of a career as a neonatal nurse includes working closely with worried parents, neonatologists, and other medical specialties in order to provide ream oriented health care to this fragile patient population.
Neonatal nurse specialists can be found in a wide range of settings including neonatal intensive care units, research, education and in community clinics.
There are three main roles the neonatal nurse will play in health care. The first is the healthy baby neonatal nurse. This nurse has more of a hands off approach as most health newborns stay with the mother constantly from the moment of birth until discharge.
Levels two and three involve caring for babies born prematurely or with serious illnesses, and work within a neonatal intensive care unit that focuses on caring for the sickest of newborns. Of the three, the intensive care work is the most complex, as neonatal nurses working with these seriously ill children must not only continually monitor the various equipment used to stabilize these infants, but must help to instruct the parents on the best ways to care for their sick child.
Registered nurses with bachelor’s degrees in nursing science, and who are certified in neonatal care, may serve as neonatal nurses. The next level of neonatal nursing care is that of the neonatal nurse practitioner, which requires a master’s degree in nursing science to prepare the nurse to obtain a license as a Nurse Practitioner.
The education and specialized training of a neonatal nurse means they command top salaries, sometimes as high as six figures.
Large numbers of qualified neonatal nurses are in high demand due to almost forty thousand premature babies being born each year in the US alone.
The good news is that teams of neonatal doctors and nurses working with the best medical equipment that money can buy have managed over the last couple of decades to improve infant survivability rates tenfold. If that trend is to continue, however, the growing demand for new neonatal nurse professionals will have to be addressed.
Learn more about the neonatal nurse. Stop by Steven Swihart’s site where you can find out all about being a nurse and what it can do for you.
categories: neonatal nurse,registered nurse,nursing,medical,general health,family
Tags: family, general health, medical, neonatal nurse, nursing, registered nurse