Kangaroo Care Essay

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‘A high risk infant can be described as any neonate regardless of birth weight, size or gestational age, who has a greater than average chance of morbidity especially within the first 28 days of life. Risk factors include pre conceptual, prenatal, natal or post natal conditions or circumstances that interfere with the normal birth process or impede adjustment to extra uterine growth and development’. (Online Medical Dictionary.) Kangaroo care is the practice of holding a nappy clad infant on a parent’s bare chest in an upright prone position. The infant is tucked inside a parent’s shirt or gown while maintaining connections to life sustaining medical equipment. (Kenner et al.2007) Kangaroo care is a specific type of nursing care nurses in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit utilise when caring for high risk infants. Prematurity and low birth weight often occurs together. According to Price et al. (2007) the less a baby weighs at birth, the greater the risks to life during delivery and immediately after. Numerous studies have shown that Kangaroo Care offers the most benefits for preterm, high risk infants, allowing them to experience more normalised temperature, improved oxygen saturation levels, more successful breast feeding episodes; it has also been seen to act as analgesia and promotes mother baby bonding from an early stage. The practice of kangaroo care first originated in Bogota, Columbia and is comparable to marsupials care of their young and so the name Kangaroo Care (KC) was developed. In Bogota numerous infants commonly shared bedding space which increased cross contamination and infection which in turn contributed to a high mortality rate of up to 70% in premature infant’s .By comparison in the US the mortality rate in 1983 for very low birth weight infants was 39 %. Kenner et al. (2007). Parents were also reluctant to bond with their infants

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