Neonatal Nurse

Nursing is one of the oldest professions of the world. Nurses have been there to help with the people who got injured due to wars. By now, the nursing profession is well developed and has become a mainstream profession in the healthcare industry. In addition to being well developed, nursing industry has also branched out for many other sub streams. Neonatal nurse is one of such branches that focus on newborn babies. Let’s explore a bit about the neonatal nurse.

First of all, there are three levels of neonatal nursing; level – 1, level – 2, and level – 3. In level-1, the neonatal nurse is capable of taking care of healthy newborn babies up to 28 days. The babies taken care of this stage are all healthy with no complications. Therefore, the skill of the neonatal nurse does not have to be exceptional. In level-2, the baby is premature or born with an illness. In this case, the neonatal nurse should have additional skills to handle such babies and medical conditions. When it comes to level-3, it is all about the babies born with a lot of complexities where the baby’s survival depends heavily on the use of technology. The level-3 neonatal nurse is usually deployed for intensive care units for babies.

Different healthcare institutions have their own requirements as the entry requirements for a neonatal nurse. But in general, all neonatal nurses are registered nurses. Since all registered nurses should have Associate or Bachelor’s degrees in nursing, all neonatal nurses should be equipped with associate or bachelor’s degrees. Sometimes, although not frequent, some healthcare institutions require the neonatal nurse to be equipped with midwifery qualifications too. This is common for some countries as well. Although fresh graduates are taken in and trained as a neonatal nurse, most of the healthcare institutions prefer to have existing nurses experienced in other areas to be taken to this profession. This is due to the experience they have in the nursing profession and the babies are more fragile than the adults.

If you are a neonatal nurse and willing to do post graduate studies in neonatal care, experts usually advice you to get at least two years of experience in the intensive care unit for the babies. This exposure and experience greatly enhance the education in the master’s and doctoral programs for neonatal care. Most of the healthcare institutions, licensing bodies, and authorities may have different requirements for continuing education for a nurses in this field.

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