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In This Issue:
Stacy and Kirk Kaflin use a webcam to see their newborn son, Jake.
The following article was written by Annie Lewis-O’Connor, NP-BC, MPH, PhD, program director for the Nursing Practice Center for Women and Newborns.
As nurses, we are part of an interdisciplinary patient care team. The breadth of this team and the collaboration needed to make it work for the good of patients is not always recognized. This is a story of true collaboration that was wholeheartedly experienced by many here at BWH.
On Oct. 22, Stacy and Kirk Kaflin made a painstaking decision. Without much warning, Stacy had developed acute cardiac decompensation, a term used to describe exacerbated heart failure. Though she was only 25 weeks into her pregnancy, Stacy’s doctors determined she would have to deliver her baby immediately, 15 weeks before her due date.
As we developed a plan of care for Stacy, it was clear that one of her biggest fears was not being able to see her baby. Once delivered, the baby would go to the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, and the mother would go to the cardiac intensive care unit in Shapiro. Someone suggested during rounds that perhaps we could set up webcams to enable Stacey to see her baby shortly after his birth. After just a few phone calls, David Kordan, Chris Fenton, John Bourque, Peter Linck and the rest of our colleagues in Audiovisual, along with Bob Daley and Theresa Donaldson in IS, made the idea a priority.
Later that day, after two web cams were attached to laptop computers, Stacy saw her son, Jake, for the first time. Mel Muszynski, RN, the NICU nurse caring for Jake, introduced herself to the new mother and explained the equipment that was visible on camera.
“You can never know the magnitude of how comforting it was to see our baby,” said Stacy, who witnessed her baby trying to open his eyes for the first time via webcam.
The journey that began with a simple request—“I want to see my baby”—has just begun, as Jake will remain in the NICU for the next three months. And while Stacy was discharged from BWH Oct. 26 and is now able to visit the NICU in person, her gratitude to the people who worked together to help her see her son remains.
“Uncle Chris and the rest of the team were great,” she said, giving Fenton the honorary “uncle” title. “He was really touched by this experience, as were we.”