Which nursing advice would be given to parents to promote safety for their infant?

Did you know that hundreds of children younger than 1 year die every year in the United States because of injuries — most of which could be prevented?

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Car Injuries
Choking and Suffocation
Plan for safety
Arousing suspicions
Ongoing education
Prevention is best
Keeping infants safe
Which nursing advice should be given to parents to promote safety for their infant?
Which care intervention would reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?
Which suggestion by the nurse would be helpful in promoting the safety of a 4 year old child quizlet?
Which activity is performed by the nurse can improve patient safety?

Often, injuries happen because parents are not aware of what their children can do. Children learn fast, and before you know it, your child will be wiggling off a bed or reaching for your cup of hot coffee.

Car Injuries

Car crashes are a great threat to your child’s life and health. Most injuries and deaths from car crashes can be prevented by the use of car safety seats. Your child, besides being much safer in a car safety seat, will behave better, so you can pay attention to your driving. Make your newborn’s first ride home from the hospital a safe one — in a car safety seat. Your infant should ride in the back seat in a rear-facing car seat.

Make certain that your baby’s car safety seat is installed correctly. Read and follow the instructions that come with the car safety seat and the sections in the owners’ manual of your car on using car safety seats correctly. Use the car safety seat EVERY time your child is in the car.

NEVER put an infant in the front seat of a car with a passenger air bag.

Falls

Babies wiggle and move and push against things with their feet soon after they are born. Even these very first movements can result in a fall. As your baby grows and is able to roll over, he or she may fall off of things unless protected. Do not leave your baby alone on changing tables, beds, sofas, or chairs. Put your baby in a safe place such as a crib or playpen when you cannot hold him.

Your baby may be able to crawl as early as 6 months. Use gates on stairways and close doors to keep your baby out of rooms where he or she might get hurt. Install operable window guards on all windows above the first floor.

Do not use a baby walker. Your baby may tip the walker over, fall out of it, or fall down stairs and seriously injure his head. Baby walkers let children get to places where they can pull heavy objects or hot food on themselves.

If your child has a serious fall or does not act normally after a fall, call your doctor.

Burns

At 3 to 5 months, babies will wave their fists and grab at things. NEVER carry your baby and hot liquids, such as coffee, or foods at the same time. Your baby can get burned. You can’t handle both! To protect your child from tap water scalds, the hottest temperature at the faucet should be no more than 120°F. In many cases you can adjust your water heater.

If your baby gets burned, immediately put the burned area in cold water. Keep the burned area in cold water for a few minutes to cool it off. Then cover the burn loosely with a dry bandage or clean cloth and call your doctor.

To protect your baby from house fires, be sure you have a working smoke alarm on every level of your home, especially in furnace and sleeping areas. Test the alarms every month. It is best to use smoke alarms that use long-life batteries, but if you do not, change the batteries at least once a year.

Choking and Suffocation

Babies explore their environment by putting anything and everything into their mouths. NEVER leave small objects in your baby’s reach, even for a moment. NEVER feed your baby hard pieces of food such as chunks of raw carrots, apples, hot dogs, grapes, peanuts, and popcorn. Cut all the foods you feed your baby into thin pieces to prevent choking. Be prepared if your baby starts to choke. Ask your doctor to recommend the steps you need to know. Learn how to save the life of a choking child.

To prevent possible suffocation and reduce the risk of sudden infant dealth syndrome (SIDS), your baby should always sleep on his or her back. Your baby should have his or her own crib or bassinet with no pillows, stuffed toys, bumpers, or loose bedding. NEVER put your baby on a water bed, bean bag, or anything that is soft enough to cover the face and block air to the nose and mouth.

Plastic wrappers and bags form a tight seal if placed over the mouth and nose and may suffocate your child. Keep them away from your baby.

The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.

Randy S. Miller has a background in maternal-newborn nursing. Currently she's student coordinator at Orlando (Fla.) Regional Healthcare and an adjunct instructor in the College of Nursing at the University of Central Florida, also in Orlando.

A WOMAN DISGUISED in scrubs walked out of a hospital in Texas with a baby hidden in her purse last March. Fortunately, police found the infant and returned her to her parents the next day. Such infant abductions from hospitals are rare (accounting for only 0.5% of all sentinel events reported to The Joint Commission1), so you may never be involved in this kind of incident. Even so, 116 infants were abducted from hospitals between 1983 and 2004,2 so staff members in any facility caring for infants must be aware of the threat.

The good news is that most infant abductions are avoidable. In this article, I'll tell you how infant abductions can be prevented when facilities institute best-practice guidelines, teach staff about patient-safety protocols, and educate infants' families.

Plan for safety

If you work in a unit that has infants, see Keeping infants safe for critical guidelines to follow, then assess your unit's procedures. Are best-practice guidelines in place and are they being followed? If not, talk with your nurse-manager about how to incorporate them.

Arousing suspicions

Staff should learn to be suspicious of anyone who visits the unit repeatedly but isn't visiting a specific patient. A potential abductor may study the unit layout, learn when staff goes into patient rooms, and ask questions about feeding times or nursery location. Anyone carrying an infant in her arms (rather than in a bassinet) or carrying large bags or packages should raise a red flag.

The abductor may target a patient room that's far away from the nurses' station or that's near an exit, stairway, or elevator. She may also create a diversion (or have an accomplice create one) so that she can escape unnoticed with the infant.

If you suspect that an infant has been abducted, activate your unit's infant alarm system immediately. This should lock all exits from the unit while security personnel search the building and the grounds. If your unit doesn't have an infant alarm system, contact security immediately to secure the perimeter of the building and to send staff to monitor all unit exit doors until security gets to the unit.

Local police may be called in as well. Go to your assigned post and wait for further instructions. At least one nurse should remain with the parents. Call a social worker or a chaplain to help support the parents if needed.

Ongoing education

Infant safety should be incorporated into annual staff competency assessments, and mock infant abduction drills should be part of staff education. These drills should be repeated as many times as needed to ensure that you and other staff members are comfortable and competent in your roles during an infant abduction.

During orientation, teach each new staff member how to recognize suspicious individuals. Review your facility's policies and procedures with her and make sure she knows what to do if she suspects that an infant is being abducted. Provide written instructions about how to activate the alarm system and call security. She must also know the policy and procedure for informing the infant's family about a possible abduction.

Educating staff is only part of the equation. When the mother or infant is admitted, explain to the parents the unit and hospital safety measures.

For instance, the parents need to know that if they want to walk with their infant, he should be in the bassinet and not in a parent's arms. The infant's security band must remain attached to his wrist and ankle at all times.3 Tell parents to call a nurse right away if the baby's band comes off. The nurse should replace it immediately in the presence of both parents, if possible.

Make sure the parents know your name and the names of other unit staff who might take the baby to the nursery or to another department for tests. Familiarize them with unit ID badges. Encourage them to ask to see identification of anyone who comes to look at the baby or take the baby to the nursery. If at any time a parent feels uncomfortable with someone who's in the room, she should press the call bell to summon a staff member.

Write down the unit routine on a whiteboard in the patient's room. When the parents know the unit's routines, they're more likely to notice when something isn't right.

Prevention is best

By educating nurses, staff, and parents, and practicing what you've learned, in most cases, you can help prevent an infant abduction before it happens.

Keeping infants safe

The Joint Commission has established best-practice guidelines for preventing infant abduction in the hospital, including these steps:

Attach secure identically numbered bands to the infant (wrist and ankle bands), mother, and father or significant other immediately after birth.
Footprint the infant, take a color photograph of him, and record his physical examination within 2 hours of birth.
Implement an infant security tag or abduction alarm system, such as a bar-coding system or umbilical clamp, which triggers an alarm, locks doors, and freezes elevators if the infant comes within 4 feet of an exit or elevator.
Transport infants only in bassinets; don't allow them to be carried or left in the hallway without direct supervision.
Establish a tracking system to document where the infant is at all times.
Require staff to wear up-to-date conspicuous, color-photograph ID badges and require staff in direct contact with infants to wear a second form of unique ID, such as a badge with a pink background.
Don't publish birth announcements in local newspapers. Don't post the full names of mothers or infants where other patients or visitors can see them.
Control access to the maternity unit; for instance, keep all unit exit doors locked and make sure they're monitored by video surveillance cameras with a date/time stamp.

Source: The Joint Commission, 2003.3

REFERENCES

1. The Joint Commission. Sentinel event statistics.http://www.jointcommission.org/SentinelEvents/Statistics/. Accessed April 26, 2007.

2. Rabun JB Jr. For Healthcare Professionals: Guidelines on Prevention of and Response to Infant Abductions, 8th edition. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2005.

3. The Joint Commission. Root causes: Practical approaches for preventing infant abduction. Joint Commission Perspectives on Patient Safety. 3(10):7–8, October 2003.http://www.jcrinc.com/5454/.

RESOURCE

Howard BJ, et al. The pediatrician's role in the prevention of missing children. Pediatrics. 114(4):1100–1105, October 2004.

Which nursing advice should be given to parents to promote safety for their infant?

Infants should sleep on their back or side to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The spaces between crib slats should be less than 6 cm apart because there is a possibility for a child's head to become wedged between them, and asphyxiation may occur.

Which care intervention would reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?

Always Place Baby on His or Her Back To Sleep, for Naps and at Night, To Reduce the Risk of SIDS. The back sleep position is the safest position for all babies, until they are 1 year old.

Which suggestion by the nurse would be helpful in promoting the safety of a 4 year old child quizlet?

The mother of a 4-year-old child is worried about the safety of her child. Which suggestion by the nurse would be helpful in promoting the safety of the child? You should instruct your child not to play or hide in a car trunk or unused appliances."

Which activity is performed by the nurse can improve patient safety?

Educating patients on their post-discharge care is a simple, yet effective, example of how nurses can improve patient safety. By working with patients to ensure they have a thorough understanding of their medical condition and self-care routine before they are discharged, nurses help facilitate a smooth recovery.