Guyana Nurse Training Program: Is that your real (gestational) age?

This morning brought us sunshine and a new 29 weeker to the unit. While Cait spent time teaching NRP to the student nurses, Mike and Kate attended the delivery of a 29 week gestation infant. While the equipment in the delivery room was a little lacking (radiant warmers that didn't warm), the baby did very well and was brought to the NICU and placed on CPAP.

The afternoon allowed practice of taping Endotracheal tubes with the mannequins and the wisdom of my preceptor, Renee Conner saying "If you can't hang your baby by it's ETT, it's not taped right!" We helped the students practice ballard gestational age scores in the unit, which was very interesting as currently many of the charts only list the gestational age according to dates. One question that came to mind was how accurate the ballard score is for babies not born in the U.S. Many of the mothers in Guyana have poor nutrition, and many have complications such as PIH and gestational diabetes. Many give birth to babies that are small for gestational age or IUGR, which makes me wonder if the ballard tool will accurately evaluate them (many of the preterm babies we scored were 3-4 weeks below what their age by dates was, but the term babies were only 1-2 weeks behind by ballard).

Our night rounded out with a trip to the Grand Costal hotel and their wednesday night "Taste of Guyana" buffet. Mike and I enjoyed some great curries, mutton, BBQ chicken, roasted pumpkin, and cassava tart. Kate enjoyed some fish fingers and plantain chips :)

Enjoy the few photos from Kate- I dropped my iphone today on the unit and it destroyed the screen and left it unusable for the rest of the trip :(

Mike in the delivery room