Neonatal Nurses Week

Inspiration Healthcare would like to wish everyone a happy Neonatal Nurses Week. This is an opportunity to celebrate and praise all the hard work and dedication of neonatal nurses around the world.

To show support and gain a better understanding on how important this week is, we had the privilege of sitting down with one of our Clinical Application Specialists, Shillo Beaton who provided a brief glimpse of what life can be like for a neonatal nurse. 

Shillo, who has previously worked as a nurse and now works in clinical applications for the past 21 years, has an extensive understanding of what the role of a neonatal nurse entails. 

This is what Shillo shared with us:

“The neonatal world is seldom a world you enter intentionally. Luckily most people when they have babies, never even know the neonatal ward exists. It’s the same for nurses. Locked away in its own little world, often Paediatric nursing students and midwifery students wonder why they have to do a placement there at all? It’s not usually the aim. That is until you walk through those locked doors, and the rest of the hospital and indeed the world at times just drops away. Once through those doors it really is an isolated world within the hospital. It’s marmite for staff, it either completely steals you or you are desperate to get away. Not for the feint hearted, the neonatal skillset is unique. Fast paced technology, surgery at the bedside, resuscitation as a regular role of care, medications that a decimal point in the wrong place could cause fatal consequences, terrified and heartbroken families, patients too fragile for life, and wrap all that up with teaching parents how to feed and change their sick baby, right up to practice baths and breastfeeding support. The role of the neonatal nurse is so wide and varied, no two shifts are the same. 

They are experts at making you feel safe and welcome, and this was so apparent during Covid. Dealing with a deadly virus/ppe/ babies with covid, staff sickness and shortages, you still felt strangely safe once those sealed doors closed behind. I’m lucky and privileged to spend my working day with such an amazing bunch of professionals”