Abstract

Standardizing care or critical pathways have delivered evidence-based care in adult medicine and have positive patient outcomes. Some aspects of standardized care have been used in neonatology, but less often in caring for the late preterm infant (gestational week 34-37 weeks). With each level of care nursery, Level-I, level-II or level-III, there can be a wide range of how to care for the late preterm infant. The purpose of this study was to determine if nurseries or various levels of care had established standards of care specific to the late preterm infant and what barriers existed that prohibited standards of care. A 10-questions survey was sent out to nurse leaders in Mid-western states and a follow-up interview of self-report responses was conducted on a random selection of the participants. Data revealed that standardized care for late preterm infants, including where the LPI gets admitted, use and discontinuation of thermoregulation, feedings, car seat testing and follow-up occurs more often in level-III nurseries and less often in level-I nurseries. Finding suggest that barriers to standardizing care for late preterm infants is often because of physician preferences, nursing staff attitude and experience level and facility constraints.

Advisor

Donna Brauer

Committee Member

Sandra Eggenberger

Date of Degree

2013

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Department

School of Nursing

College

Allied Health and Nursing

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Download

Share

COinS
 

Rights Statement

In Copyright