Premature Baby Care at Baptist Health

Baptist Health Corbin: Premature Baby Care

Neonatologist Prasad Bhandary, MD, discusses how Baptist Health Corbin’s Neonatal Intensive Care unit provides advanced care, close to home, for parents and their newborns.

Premature Baby Care Health Talks Transcript

Prasad Bhandary, MD, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine
A Level 2 intermediate care nursery is a specialized form of nursery, which can take care of sick babies and premature babies greater than 32 weeks and above, or greater than 1,500 grams. Care for the babies is done with a team of providers, including the neonatologist, the nurses, the dietitian, social worker, [and the] respiratory therapist. This team focuses on specialized needs and sickness, whatever the baby might have at that point in time.

There has been a paradigm shift over the past few years regarding a parent’s role in the NICU. We believe that parents have a very active role in the improvement of their baby. At Baptist Health Corbin, we encourage parents to stay with the baby as long as possible. We encourage breastfeeding. We also encourage kangaroo care for babies in the NICU here. Kangaroo care is skin-to-skin contact between the mother and the baby, which has been proven to provide better care for the baby and a decreased hospital stay. And, when babies are taken care of at a hospital that is closer to their home, parents have the advantage to visit the baby as often as they like, instead of being in a hospital that is a hundred miles away. I think this is a huge benefit for the community and parents if their baby does get sick.