Watching over baby

New equipment at Fremont Area Medical Center’s child birth center will increase safety and care for moms in labor and their babies, officials said.

Marci Stokes, manager of maternity/child services at FAMC, said the new central fetal monitoring system allows nurses and doctors to monitor all moms in labor from the nursing station.

“We used to have to take a fetal monitor to the room and monitor the fetal heartbeat and contractions from the room,” she said. “The nurse would physically go in and read the strip.”

Fetal monitors record uterine contractions and blood pressure of laboring moms and the fetal heart rate are connected from each of eight patient rooms to the central unit. That central unit allows any nurse to monitor any patient and even monitor multiple patients at once.

“With the alarms, it notifies the nurses of critical situations like if the heart beat drops or we’re no longer picking up the contractions because mom moved,” Stokes said.

The new fetal monitors are still hooked up to women the same way as ones previously used and she said most moms don’t know the difference. They work to transmit the information similar to how an adult cardiac monitor.

“I like that any nurse can respond to an alarm without having to be called. We can help each other,” said Jenny Eyler, an obstetrics nurse. “We can run in and help without putting the call light on.”

Problems or questions also can be addressed more easily by the patient’s doctor with the new fetal monitoring system.

“The physician has (remote) access to the system and can look at the same thing the nurse is,” Stokes said.

She said instant access for doctors increases patient safety.

“I used to have to call and describe (the readout) so the doctor would know what I was talking about,” said Toni Dean, an obstetrics nurse. “It’s a big plus for patient safety.”

Peg Kennedy, FAMC vice president and chief nurse executive, said even though a patient can be monitored without the nurse entering the room, patient contact will not be reduced.

“The new system allows for a higher level of individualized care for every laboring patient on the unit,” Kennedy said. “If one mom needed more vigilant monitoring, a nurse was constantly entering the room to check her status. That not only made it more difficult for mom to get some rest, but it also simply wasn’t as efficient for the staff. Now the staff has more complete information at all times �” when they’re in the room, as well as at the nurses’ station.”

The system provides a complete digital record for each patient and newborn, decreasing the time a nurse spends working on charts.

“Charting is faster, so we can spend more time with patients and it allows for fast access to comprehensive patient information whenever and wherever needed,” Stokes said. “The feedback from staff has been phenomenal.”

Dean has been a nurse in the department for 28 years and said that while the new system has taken some getting used to, she likes it.

“It’s been a good transition,” Dean said. “It’s just the technology that changes, we still have to keep up with the patients. Our labor patients are still one to one care.”

While patient counts in the department run in spurts, the more moms in labor, the more the system helps, the women said.

“With multiple patients in labor, it helps tremendously,” Dean said. “We feel like we’re clued into everything so much faster.”