Women & Infants operates one of the nation’s largest single-family room Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU), where the latest technology and highly skilled specialists care for babies born prematurely or sick.
The NICU provides comprehensive care through the coordinated efforts of social workers, occupational therapists, nutritionists, respiratory therapists, neonatal nurses, neonatal nurse practitioners, neonatal-perinatal fellows, and attending neonatologists and pediatricians. Practitioners skilled in the care and stabilization of sick newborns are available in-house 24 hours a day. The single-family room model also encourages families to be actively involved in their baby’s care.
Each room has a special couch that converts to a bed so parents can spend the night with their baby. On the two-story unit, there is also plenty of space dedicated to families for rest, eating lunch or making phone calls with status updates. A beautiful family lounge stretches from the first floor to the second in the NICU, featuring a full kitchen, showers for parents, computers, a play area for older siblings, and a mesmerizing salt water fish tank.
Families also find support in the unit’s full-time parent advocate, sponsored by a grant from the Rhode Island Parent Information Network, and a March of Dimes’ parent advocate.
The Women & Infants NICU is a special place. Nearly 25% of babies born here are to high-risk mothers, and 11% are premature. Our survival rates for very low birth weight infants are well above national averages. As of June 2008, survival rates for infants born at 24 weeks gestation was 71.1%; 86.5% at 25 weeks; 92.9% at 26 weeks; 95.2% at 27 weeks; 100% at 28 weeks; .95.5% at 29 weeks; and 97.7% at 30 weeks.
Click on the links below to read two patient stories from our NICU:
