Neonatal Nurse

Imagine a room that gives life and death. Crying, squirming babies sleep in glowing incubators that have an a plethora of machines attached to it that beep and buzz day and night. A mother reaching into one of these incubators to touch her tiny baby that only weighs two pounds. While in a quiet corner nurses and doctors hovering over a baby in another incubator watching it take quick, tiny breaths. Just another day at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for neonatal nurses. These nurses work tirelessly to save the tiniest patients with an addiction to cocaine or the ones with exposed or missing organs. Neonatal registered nurses (RN), arguably, have one of the most emotionally stressful jobs that leave them resembling a

Duties and responsibility
Neonatal nurses work in a wide range of care for intensive care for babies because of the delicate bodies and the wide range of issues these babies can be born with; such as immune deficiencies, drug addictions, deformities, and premature births. These babies are born within the neonatal period which is defined as the first 28 days of life by (Brannagan, 2016); these first days of life are crucial to an infant 's life. Every day these nurses chart what happens to their patient and teach parents how to care for their tiny infants. These charts must be very precise and must not under any circumstances include personal opinions from the nurse. Charting must be done every three hours and have information such as a patient 's food intake, their blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate, and how the baby acted and/or parents. While charting nurses might change the baby 's diaper and/or feed the patient if the parents cannot or are absent. The amount of paperwork and charting a nurse must do depends on what condition the baby has and whether the condition is critical or not. For example, a baby

In the past, students, before becoming RNs, would obtain an associate’s degree in nursing or a certified nursing assistant (CNA). However, these programs have become more obsolete because of the lack of benefits offered compared to those of an RN. Normally, a bachelor 's degree takes four years of schooling from an accredited school, but according to Faith of Billings, Montana St. Vincent, “Most jobs don’t consider a student an experienced nurse [of the NICU] until they have worked in the NICU for three years.” (La Fevre, 2016) The reason for this logic is that because there is so much to learn about how to treat and care for NICU babies all their education could not possibly cover the reality of caring for these infants. When searching for a accredited nursing school in Montana, students will find that Bozeman offers the most prestigious and only nursing program in the state of Montana; and has expanded its program into the Montana State University of Billings. To be accepted into the program students must complete two years of schooling then apply to be accepted into the program. To receive a spot in the program students must have a certain GPA that varies year to year. This program expresses competitiveness due to the fact that the university only has room for 200 applicants. Applicants who are not accepted into the program immediately are placed onto a