My First Year of NICU Nursing!

I'm not ready to put dead babies in a bag

I'm currently on week 5 of orientation. I've gotten some of the sickest kids on the unit at this point. A lot of things I'm learning are things I've done on other floors...the NICU just does the same things in different ways. Frustrating, but I guess I'm going to have to forget the "old" way of doing things. 

I was in the supply room the other day looking for items. One of the first things i saw was a body bag...just casually in the supply room. I asked a nurse if she uses that a lot, and she said she actually does see a lot of death and use it. Nurses are responsible for doing post-mortem care. This is not a task I have ever actually completed. I've seen one person in my life die in front of me. It was in nursing school when I did a rotation in the ED. Other than that, none of my patients have actually died on me. I've had patients that stopped breathing randomly, but we were able to have them spontaneously breathe again or we just called the code team for help.

I'm nervous that this might be in my near future. I don't think I will handle putting a dead baby in a bag well. I really really do not want to do that...

<3

Annie 💜