Special Care Nursery with Level II Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
When infants are born requiring a higher level of care, Houston Healthcare
offers specialized care in the Special Care Nursery. Our Level II NICU
is a special unit for infants born preterm and with other critical conditions.
You baby will be cared for by our NICU trained Nursing and Respiratory
staff in a caring environment.
Our NICU is specially designed to care for critically ill newborns. Skilled
nurses and staff, experienced in the care of NICU babies are on 24/7 duty
giving your baby comforting nursing care and providing the medical care
the doctor has ordered
General information about our Special Care Nursery
We encourage parents to participate in their child’s care and perform
skin-to-skin when possible.
- If your infant must stay hospitalized beyond your hospital stay, we will
evaluate census and offer “Nesting” when available. Nesting
allows parents to stay in a hospital room for up to 48 hours after discharge
when space is available. We do our best to accommodate this whenever possible.
Safety and security concerns for hospitalized infants and children
We will explain our safety program to parents in detail at admission, but
here are a few important points:
- Only parents and grandparents are permitted to visit inside of the NICU
for infection control reasons.
- Updates provided over the phone are available with passcode.
- Allow only staff with proper hospital picture ID to remove a child from
their room for a test, exam or surgery. Parents will accompany them as
much as possible.
Infants are special patients, requiring extra attention and care
- An infant will be fed according to their schedule or as the doctor orders.
We encourage and support breastfeeding. Moms are encouraged to pump and
bring breast milk to the NICU whenever breastfeeding is not an option.
Your breast milk will be labeled and stored in our breast milk refrigerator.
This allows for your infant to begin receiving your breastmilk as soon
as they’re able to begin feeding.
Visiting
Visiting and bonding with your baby is important. However, for our NICU
patient’s privacy, health, treatments and recovery, we ask that
you observe the following policies:
- Visiting hours all day with the exception of shift change between 6-8 am
& pm and at times where staff are actively working to stabilize an
infant. We will do our best to accommodate visiting hours to allow for
the important bonding to take place.
- A parent or guardian with a matching armband should always be present with
their child during visitation.
Discharge home
When the doctor decides that an infant may be discharged home, one of our
NICU staff will assist the baby and parents as they prepare to leave.
- They will review any special instructions needed to care for a baby once home
- They will give parents any prescriptions the doctor has written and review
important information about these medicines
- They will arrange for someone to accompany the child to the car
Remember the legal requirements for car safety seats in the state of Georgia.
- We request that parents have the appropriate infant car seat and base if
applicable installed in the vehicle at the time of discharge. You are
permitted to bring your car seat inside and place infant into car seat
before discharge if you choose.
A few final thoughts
We appreciate parent’s feedback during and after a baby’s hospitalization.
- We encourage comments and feedback on the care their baby is receiving
throughout the hospital stay to help us better serve you and your baby
- We welcome any suggestions and desire to improve at any opportunity to
do so that your hospital experience can be remembered in a positive way
Please do not hesitate to contact any of our staff with comments, but especially speak to:
