Neonatal Nursing in the U.S. today

It seems like a miracle all wrapped into a blanket, with its tiny hands, tiny feet and tiny body. Can you guess what this miracle is? It’s a baby. They are born almost every hour of every day, come rain, shine or even snow. In the United States during 2008, there are 4,251,095 recorded births, and it is shown in studies that it was down 2% of the normal rate it has been at in the previous years (U.S. Births per Year | Business News). At the end of the long journey from womb to real world, the loving families take their bundle of joy home to greet family and friends. But what happens to those babies that don’t just get to go home right away? Most have something simple that keeps their stay in the hospital a little longer, such as infant jaundice, yet there are worst fates than that, such as premature birth, “About 12.8% of babies (more than half a million a year) are born prematurely”( Premature Birth - March of Dimes). It is the neonatal nurse’s job to take care of these little babies that have been born too early.
Neonatal nurses are nurses that take care of infants that need extra care when they are born before they are due. There are different levels of neonatal nurses which all demand different responsibilities from the nurse as well as different needs for the baby. For example, a Level I neonatal nurse is someone who looks after infants who are healthy and do not require any special medical treatment (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills). Sometimes these level nurses are known as pediatric nurses; although these types of nursing jobs are short in demand due to the insurance companies cutting the length of time mother and baby stay in the hospital after birth (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills). A Level II nurse typically takes care of newborns that were either born prematurely or are just in need of intermediate medical care such as special medication (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills). A Level III nurse takes care of newborns that have been born with serious and life-threatening health problems. These neonatal nurses work in Neonatal Intensive Care Units or NICU’s (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills). Some of the education required to become a neonatal nurse “vary depending on the hospital in which the nurse is employed, but typically neonatal nurses are required to complete a registered nursing program in addition to obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree or Masters of Science in Nursing Degree” (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills).
There are various other characteristics of a Neonatal nurse such as pay, and other skills needed to be successful in this field. The pay of a neonatal nurse greatly depends on the location, training and years of experience that the nurse has had (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills). A registered nurse, who is a closely related to a neonatal nurse, can make a range of earnings from year to year. For example 10% of nurses make as low as $40,000 a year, most nurses make an average of $57,000 a year and some even make as much as $85,000 a year (Career Details for Nurse). Every nurse needs a certain amount of skills to survive as a good, well experienced nurse. For example, all nurses need to the ability to think fast and efficiently in order to make the decision to save someone’s life. Some of the other skills needed by a nurse are the ability to work well with others, in addition to the ability to work well as a group due to the fact that it is a nurse’s job to be able to communicate with the doctors and other nurse’s involved in a specific patient’s health. This makes certain that the patient’s needs, wellbeing and life are in great hands. This skill is specifically essential to neonatal nurses because they work alongside many doctors such as a neonatologists and neonatal nurse practitioners due to the severe conditions in which several of the infants lives are in (Neonatal Nurses, Neonatal Nursing Career, Care For Newborns, Neonatal Nurse Skills).
Throughout every profession, different types of controversies come about because it is in our nature as humans to grow and develop to the best of our abilities. At the same time, some people believe we have maybe gone just too far with some things such as stem cell research or abortion, yet some people believe we haven’t gone far enough with research for things like cancer or infant deaths. As the United States has grown into a rich, successfully industrialized country, we continue to try and better the quality and length of our lives. We spend billions of dollars on research to prevent cancer, diseases, common colds, and other such outcomes of pain. We have even begun to understand the process of birthing and how to make it more comfortable for the mother and make a successful and healthy baby appear. Even though throughout time the rate of successful birth for mother and baby have grown greatly as well as the rate of successful maturity of offspring, there are still shocking statistics and rates of premature and infant deaths even in such an industrialized country like the United States.
According to the Census Bureau there is approximately one birth every 8 seconds (US & World Population Clock). They also say that as of April 11, 2010 there are approximately 309,048,551 people in the United States alone (US & World Population Clock). They range from age, ethnic background and size, yet they are all still human with emotions, hopes, needs and dreams. It is our responsibility to educate the people in our country regardless of their background, size, color, age, or ethnicity. One of the main growing problems in the United States is the increasing amount of infant deaths even though we are one of the richest and most industrialized countries in the world. In the United States alone there are a recorded 630 infant deaths in every 100,000 births (Infant Mortality). So out of the 309,048,551 recorded populations in the U.S. today, almost 2,000 infants have died.
There are so many ways to help try and prevent this outrageously high mortality rate for such an industrialized country. One of the easiest ways to prevent it is to simply educate the people of the nation, regardless of any social or physical stipulations. If education was available with no charge and easily accessible to people with any type of social economic standing whether it be low or high, the rate of prenatal care would sky rocket. This would promote a healthy fetus from the time of known conception and this could greatly increase the chance of a healthy, happy and full-term baby greatly. If we could somehow give everyone a chance, whether they are afraid to admit they made the mistake of getting pregnant or just don’t know what to do because either they don’t speak English, we could possibly lower that statistics even more.
Some of the infant deaths belong to young teenagers or mothers beyond the age of recommended conception. Researchers believe that it is the strain of the pregnancy and birth combined with poor prenatal care that leads to the death of possibly baby, mother or both. The things that contribute to it can vary from the amount of babies being born such as twins, triplets or more, health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, etc (Premature Birth - March of Dimes). Another factor that causes it is people conceiving younger than 17 or older than 35 (Premature Birth - March of Dimes).
This directly relates back to neonatal nurses because it is their job to take care of the babies that can’t survive without help. We must join together to try and provide information to the public about various ways to prevent infant deaths. As humans we must do all we can to help prevent these tragic things from happening to loving families. Although the lack of premature births would drastically lower their job demand, it would increase the amount of healthy, happy babies as well as healthy and happy parents and families; this is the main hope in the world—happy and healthy citizens.
The important message to conclude all of this information is a great deal of things. As humans it is in our nature to show compassion and love to the people around us as well as the other species that inhabit our planet. We must continue to try to prevent the negative from occurring amongst the defenseless. When people study and successfully become nurses, it is their dream everyday during every shift to make someone, somewhere better because they existed as a nurse. So at the end of this, I hope that we can continue to advance our skills in the medical field so that we can further assist those who need us most.

Interview Write up

For my interview, I asked a family friend named Brianna Hurley who is currently working as a pediatric nurse at the Phoenix Children’s hospital. I asked her various questions about different aspects of her job. For example I asked about how she decided to get into pediatric nursing, and what she hopes to accomplish by becoming a nurse. With all of the questions she answered for me, I realized what a truly rewarding job this could possibly be for anyone. The ability to make a child’s day brighter after darkness is a great one and I hope that maybe someday I might be able to do that. I used a lot of the same information as the things that Brianna had given me although I didn’t have the classes she talked about as well as what a typical day of a pediatric nurse is like. I am glad I did this interview because it really gave me an insight on some things that I never really knew before such as how truly rewarding and fun working as a pediatric nurse.

Visuals! =]

I think this video helps my topic because it really gives the low down on what it takes to become a neonatal nurse. Even if this mainly talks about education, it still gives good information about what people need to do for this field.





This video was picked because I liked the way it talked about what it was really like to work in a NICU and how it felt to really take care of those babies everyday. I also enjoyed it because it made me realize how perfect this job is for me.

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography
"Infant Mortality." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 07 Apr. 2010.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality
This website is all about the mortality rates throughout the United States as well as all throughout the entire world. It also depicts the definition of what a perinatal death, neonatal death, post neonatal death, and child mortality. It breaks it all down into different sections from mortality trends, comparing infant deaths between continents, countries and states. The reason I picked this essay to possibly use in this essay was because my controversy is about the mortality rates in the United States as well as a country as a whole. As an advanced industrialized country we have about 40 infants out of 1,000 infants die. The reason I know this is creditable is because I’ve used Wikipedia many of times and also I saw some of the same charts, graphs and information on other websites throughout the internet.

"Neonatal Nursing: The Nursing Career That Focuses on Taking Care of Babies." Web.http://www.nursingcrossing.com/article/890015/Neonatal-Nursing-The-Nursing-Career-That-Focuses-on-Taking-Care-of-Babies/
I choose this website because it talks about the main points and the main areas of neonatal nursing. The thing that I like the most is that it breaks down the different positions that a neonatal nurse with go through. For example there is a level one, level two and a level three; these are the different levels of a neonatal nurse and the job descriptions. It also talks about the qualifications and education that is required to become a practicing neonatal nurse. I hope to use this in my introduction paragraphs of my essay to help describe the different areas, requirements, education and job description of neonatal nursing and neonatal nurses. Also the reason I think this site is creditable is because I have another site on this bibliography that has the generally same information although some if different from the other website.

"Preventing Infant Mortality." Web.http://www.hhs.gov/news/factsheet/infant.html
This website is probably the exact opposite that I need, but at the same time I really wanted to look over this website. In this essay we are supposed to come up with some of our own ideas on how we can suggest fixing the controversy we are researching. My idea to fix the controversy of high infant mortality is that as a country we need to spend more time researching ways that we can help make the birth of babies and their first weeks, and months of their life the best possible. Another way that I thought of was that we need to make information about prenatal care available to anyone, whether they have a computer or a car; just because their parents are unfortunate, doesn’t mean that the child should get cheated out of life. I hope to use this essay to read over ways that other people have thought to try and make my argument and my idea original, yet actually useable. The reason this is a creditable website is because it is a government website.

"Neonatal Nursing Careers." Web.http://www.nursing-school-degrees.com/Nursing-Careers/Neonatal-Nurse.html
Although this is a repeat of another website about what the job of a neonatal nurse requires, but the reason I choose this website was that I hope to get a different look at the career. It may have some new information that may help me get a good look at the neonatal nursing field as well as help me get a great argument formed for my controversy. The reason I think this website is creditable is because it has the same general information as another website although this website does have some new things that I haven’t yet come across. I do still plan to do even more research just to make sure my points and arguments are valid, and not based on fake facts.

Collected Links

1. http://www.nann.org/
This website is designed for the national association of neonatal nurses. The reason I choose it was because this is the single place that people can go and become united under one cause. It is packed full of all kinds of useful information about neonatal nursing. It has information about how to find a job as a neonatal nurse or help them find a new one if they want to move, as well as helps employers post job openings. It also has information about education such as helping other people involved in the medical field further their career through www.NICUNIVERSITY.org. In the website there is even an online store that has various things you can purchase. For example there are books, CDs and even pins and charms. To me, the main purpose of this website is to help unite the people who all are doing the same thing, trying to help save the world one baby at a time. That is the reason I choose this website.
2. http://www.northeastcenter.com/links_nursing_blogs.htm
I choose this website because it has so many different types of blogs. There are blogs from nurse practitioners, midwifes, nurses from New York, rehab nurses, a mental facility nurse, an emergency room nurse, and many more. It was so interesting looking at the different tales of different people. They talk about what their jobs are or what they did that day. I have to say my favorite one was about the rehab nurse. I have always had a slight interest in the mental health field, in which was at the time when I was still deciding on exactly the field I wanted to go in to. I also love hearing about other people’s lives, so that was another interesting thing about this particular website. That is why I choose this website.
3. http://www.nursingcrossing.com/article/890015/Neonatal-Nursing-The-Nursing-Career-That-Focuses-on-Taking-Care-of-Babies/
This website is an article talking about different aspects of the neonatal nursing field. It depicts different areas of practice for the neonatal nurses. For example level 1 which talks about starting out with healthy infants as a way to introduce you to becoming completely comfortable with tiny babies. Although they did say this job was scarce due to the insurance company cutting the time that the infant and mother spend in the hospital after birth. Level two talks about taking care of infants who are premature and need immediate medical attention. These are the babies who need special care. The rest of the article talks about the other levels of practice involved with neonatal nursing as well as skills, qualifications, and education needed for this type of job. That is why I choose this particular article for research.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonatal_nursing
You can guess that this website is your typical, everyday Wikipedia site. In this website, it talks about everything the job is about. Although this is a short, and to the point kind of article, I think it really sets the stage for any other research someone is going to do about the topic. This helps you get the simple stuff out of the way so that you can dig into the juicy stuff. I’m not sure what else I should say about it. In this it restates the different levels of the job. It also states the requirements and qualifications of a neonatal nurse. Another website I found that loosely relates to my topic of neonatal nursing is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediatric_nursing. This website talks about regular pediatric nursing rather than NICU. This is why I choose this website.

Topic Blog

For this assignment/blog I was told to write about what I plan to write about for my research paper in class. It took me a little to decide which career I want to write about. I have so many things that I want to do with my life such as I want to someday become a vet or a doctor; either one I want to get my PhD in something. I just haven't decided if I like humans or animals more. Although one thing that I know I want to do with my life is work with children. As long as I can remember I always wanted to be a nurse. I have always wanted to help people get better and even save their lives. When I was younger, if anyone got sick, I would be there ‘doctor’; I would fetch them water or anything else they needed and I would force them to take it easy. As I got older, I put a lot of thought into if this truly was what I wanted to do for a career. Of course I decided it was but I never knew where in nursing I wanted to be. Just recently, when my older cousins and my sister started their families, I found my calling. So for my topic for my research paper I decided to write about either neonatal nursing or just pediatric nursing. The reason I love infants or children so much is that they have such innocence to them. They don’t judge who you are, what you have done in your life or where you are going; they love you unconditionally regardless of anything. Children have such creativity and energy that they motivate the world to rotate. I want to help the innocent infants truly make it in their first hours, days and weeks on this planet. Of course I have other things I want to do with my nursing degree, but my long-term goal as a nurse is I want to go into pediatric or neonatal nursing. That is why I chose this topic, is because it directly relates to my career and to my future.

Intro blog

So here it goes! I have never really had a blog in my life, so this is going to be a new experience. This blog was set up for my English 101 course. I am hoping that maybe I'll learn to actually keep a blog after this, maybe it'll be a lot of fun.