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"To compound the family's distress, the neonatal team then failed to properly carry out a vital resuscitation procedure on Harry, struggling for 26 minutes to i
by JPKab 4y ago
"To compound the family's distress, the neonatal team then failed to properly carry out a vital resuscitation procedure on Harry, struggling for 26 minutes to insert a life support tube."
My son was born 3 months premature 16 years ago. In US hospitals, insertion of vent tubes and other things like this when a baby is first born is handled by specialized technicians. They have a lot of training like nurses do, but they aren't technically nurses. They are called "respiratory technicians". Along with the nurses, they are EXPERTS at doing these procedures on tiny infants. They practice on dummies constantly. I spoke to a few (one of whom saved my son's life) over a period of weeks while my son was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital in North Carolina he was born in.
Just stating this, because something that I learned from British parents is that NHS hospitals, while excelling in providing affordable care for general issues, are lacking in highly trained specialists who can insert a breathing tube in an infant in literally seconds due to having practiced it obsessively for years. NHS NICUs also lag behind American NICUs in having the latest equipment. The tradeoff of course is that American NICUs are orders of magnitude more expensive, and that is a very important point to emphasize.
- badcppdev 4y agoI'm very glad to hear that your son had a skilled positive story. Premature babies are so tiny and it's amazing that they can be born so early and then grow up absolutely healthy if they get the right care. The use and training of specialists is only one part of the puzzle that needs to be optimised in so many different ways. And I will point out that one of the key results of this puzzle is infant mortality statistics and the US does not score very well on that metric. I don't understand 1% of the details of why but it's quite a problem. And this is in spite of the money spent on healthcare I don't really want to be a cheerleader for the NHS or the US system in this comment because both have so many problems involving bureaucracy, money, politics, etc. And it's a pity because ultimately it's the most vulnerable in society who are affected the most.
- abigail95 4y agoIs USA high infant mortality caused by them putting so much extra effort into NICU? Obviously not. If the NHS adopted American standards for NICU, they would save more lives. But they would have to spend more money. They don't want to spend more money.
- philjohn 4y agoUK resident here, and I'd like them to spend more money - especially as income tax is higher for a large cohort of the population than it was before the current admin took power, which coupled with the ruinous austerity cuts means that we're not funding it properly is the scandal of the ages.