Teams have continued to work on Kangaroo Care (KC) and many have shown an increase in opportunities for KC on more shifts. Visual cues to are credited with part of the increase including posters for families and staff, stickers on charts or beds and new written material promoting the practice. A “ challenge contest” between day shift and night shift @ one hospital increased KC overall from 40% to 63% of the time for eligible babies. Focusing on KC brings new questions to light for instance, must KC be halted for the entire time when babies require phototherapy? Might the practice continue with a phototherapy blanket or might phototherapy be interrupted for this important practice once a shift after bilirubin peaks? These and other questions only surface when examining our habits and policies. Newly introduced this month is the role of feeding guidelines for the VLBW baby and several teams have forwarded their guidelines to be placed on the extranet.
