Togetherness: All Things Are Possible In a Baby Friendly World
- Identify evidence based research for keeping mothers and babies together in the postpartum period
- Describe 2-3 initiatives promoting rooming in, including skin to skin, which can be applied in your own hospital.
- Formulate a plan to incorporate the above initiatives into your nursing practice
The purpose of this poster presentation is to encourage other mother baby nurses to implement togetherness within their own practice and their place of work. By supplying nurses with the current research in the area of togetherness, including rooming in and skin to skin contact, they are able to in turn provide evidence based nursing care to patients in the obstetric period.
Proposed change:
To provide a continuum of togetherness, from birth to discharge, for the mother baby couplet. While the goal of obstetric nurses is to keep mothers and babies together after delivery, they are often needlessly separated throughout their hospital stay.
Implementation, outcomes and evaluation:
The poster will bring the reader through three stages of implementing togetherness into their nursing care. The first section will be a historical background of togetherness and research supporting this practice. Readers can use this information to provide evidence for the need to change common current hospital practices.
The second section will focus on implementation of togetherness that can be carried out in the hospital setting. By providing examples of change the nurses will not need to spend the time “reinventing the wheel” of togetherness, but be able to identify specific changes that can be applied in their own hospitals.
The third section will encourage nurses to look at their hospital for readiness to change. It is easy to get excited about providing better care for our patients, but often following through with change is the most difficult part. By examining the culture of change in hospitals, nurses will be able to identify barriers they may encounter as they work toward providing togetherness in their mother baby care.
Implications for nursing practice:
Togetherness is an important topic in mother baby nursing care. It has been identified as a key component in increasing exclusive breastfeeding rates and patient satisfaction.
Keywords:
Togetherness
Rooming-in
Skin to skin care
