This year has certainly been a unique one for expectant parents. As the coronavirus swept across the world, it took with it baby showers, casual walks through the onesie aisles at Target, coffee dates with pregnant friends, grandparents eagerly pacing the waiting room, and even mask-free deliveries. For many parents, the joy of welcoming a new addition has been colored by stress about what childbirth looks like in the COVID-19 era and anxieties about whether it’s safe at all.
But despite all of the unexpected changes presented by the pandemic, the extraordinary care provided by the Women’s Division teams at Pennsylvania Hospital has remained the same — even when the hospital hit a new record, delivering more than 500 babies in July! “We’re still providing patients with the tailored, compassionate, skillful care they need,” said Debi Ferrarello, MSN, MS, RN, IBCLC, NE-BC, director of Parent Education. “Once they come in, it’s really not about COVID-19. It’s about having a baby.”
Reimagining Prenatal Education
Just as departments across the hospital effectively turned to telemedicine to stay connected with patients, Ferrarello successfully leveraged technology in the patient education sphere, transitioning several classes for new parents and grandparents online. The reception to these classes has been incredibly positive — with some programs like the baby care class gaining more registrants than ever — and she plans to continue offering virtual and small-group, on-campus options through the pandemic and beyond to provide parents with convenient options that fit their comfort levels.
Also massively successful were two one-hour “Pregnant in a Pandemic” webinars that Ferrarello developed to address the questions and concerns expressed by expectant parents whose due dates are approaching. These comprehensive events covered topics like visitation policies and the extremely low risk of parent-to-child coronavirus transmission and broke down each step of the journey, ranging from what personal protective equipment staff will be wearing to the patient experience on each unit. The webinars received rave reviews, with one particularly grateful participant noting, “In 60 minutes, [my husband and I] received more tangible information regarding COVID-19's impact on various facets of pregnancy, labor, and delivery than I’ve received in four months.”
Prioritizing Compassionate Care
Christine and Dan welcomed daughter Eva to their growing family on June 12. Photo: @danhershberg
For Jamillah Washington, MSN, RN, nurse manager of the Delivery Room, the division’s approach has been straightforward: “We’ve made some adjustments, but our main focus is still our patients and making sure they have a positive experience.”
Some of these changes include the implementation of a single room strategy, a universal masking policy, and coordinated COVID-19 testing prior to scheduled inductions and C-sections. One support person can stay with the patient, and for patients who planned to have a doula with them, FaceTime has been utilized to accommodate their needs. Though their experiences may not have exactly lined up with the birth plans they created ahead of time, patients have continued sending thank you cards in droves, including an extremely nervous new mom with COVID-19 who wrote a letter sharing her appreciation for how “cocooned” she felt throughout her hospitalization.
“In the beginning of COVID, a nurse mentioned that she felt so upset for patients who couldn’t have their families with them, but then another nurse replied, ‘That’s okay. They’re part of our family now.’ That’s the kind of compassion our teams have brought to this challenge. We’ve been wrapping our arms around these patients as they’ve navigated the unknown,” said Beth Ann Pyle, MSN, MBA, NE-BC, RNC-MNN, nurse manager of the Mother Baby Unit.
Balancing Family and Safety
Sarah and Mike celebrated the birth of their first child, Gael, on April 11. “I want to thank the staff at Pennsylvania Hospital. We didn’t feel like we were robbed of our day because of what’s going on in the world right now. We felt at ease and in good hands,” Mike wrote on Instagram. Photo: @mikeadamonair
The PAH team is dedicated to keeping parents and newborns together from birth to discharge unless observation is needed for medical reasons, but for babies who require some extra support, their next stop is the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN). Whether they need a few days to continue growing or a few months of advanced neonatal care, the experience can be disorienting for families. Though the ICN team’s focus isn’t postpartum care, they masterfully meet the needs of both babies and their anxious parents. The visitation policy has expanded since the initial surge to allow two family members to visit one at a time, skin-to-skin bonding (while masked) is encouraged, and parents can still deliver breastmilk with ease.
“We’ve been soliciting lots of feedback so we can ensure we’re balancing the importance of family presence with the safety of the unit,” said Elizabeth Quigley, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, nurse manager of the ICN. “We understand that the baseline stress of having a baby is compounded by having a baby in the ICN, and that’s compounded by COVID-19. We’ve been using virtual platforms like FaceTime to connect families and are doing whatever we can to create some normalcy in an abnormal time.”