The CHRISTUS Southeast Texas Foundation is excited to announce that we have provided five Panda Bed Warmers for the Center for New Life at CHRISTUS Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth, thanks to the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation. These Panda Bed Warmers will help fulfill the ultimate goal of equipping each of the 19 labor and delivery rooms with an infant warmer, as they are required to be in each room for delivery. Until now, the Center for New Life only had four outdated warmers.
St. Elizabeth’s Center for New Life is beginning to see an increase in patients due to the new CHRISTUS Women’s Center, which sends patients to St. Elizabeth to deliver. This patient overflow is intensifying the already urgent need for additional warmers.
Newborns in respiratory distress must be immediately and expertly handled. The warmers are all-in-one stabilization equipment, complete with warming devices and resuscitation devices. Benefits of the warmers include innovative recessed heating, which keeps babies warm while keeping nurses cool; integrated in-bed scale, which makes weighing babies quick and easy; and equipment for resuscitation therapy. The warmers are compact, streamlined, easy to maneuver, and user friendly, which makes them ideal for a high risk and high stress delivery room resuscitation.
The warmers allow for immediate care for sick newborns with integrated resuscitation available and minimal setup for high-risk deliveries. The warmers also offer easy patient monitoring with integrated, full-color displays that help track the infant’s temperature, weight, oxygen levels, and pulse rate. The compact size allows more room for the nurse, the patient, and the family to interact with the infant.
The warmers are primarily used for two reasons: resuscitation and stimulation. Last year alone, 300 newborns at the Center for New Life needed resuscitation. The resuscitation devices are available to all of the 2,000+ deliveries each year at St. Elizabeth and provide lifesaving resuscitation therapy in times of emergency. Resuscitation devices include a blender to provide blended oxygen to the infant; a pulse oximeter, which measures the oxygen saturation of the infants; and a NeoPuff, which helps to control lung volume, a widely recognized standard in resuscitation devices for newborn resuscitation.
In order to adhere to the highest standards of care, we must provide a warmer in each labor and delivery room. These warmers are the safest place for nurses to provide resuscitation and warmth.
If a newborn’s temperature drops, it may cause issues with respiration and blood sugar. If the infant is not able to receive immediate warming procedures, it increases the chances of the infant being admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, increasing costs for the family, decreasing health outcomes for the infant, and interfering with family bonding. The warmers will increase the chance of the infant staying in the room if there is a minor emergency that can be remedied with the warmer.
CHRISTUS has newly implemented skin to skin contact post birth to make the transition from fetal to newborn life easier. For normal births, this skin to skin time is possible. But for many high-risk births and emergency births, skin to skin is not possible; and for these emergency births, the best option is the warmers, which provide all body temperature, blood glucose, heart rate, and resuscitation support. Our greatest thanks go to the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation for helping us remain highly prepared with state-of-the-art equipment in times of emergency.