Parkland Hospital - Our Heritage

rooming in

'Rooming in' program gives babies more time with mom

It’s one of the most iconic images of parenthood: a mother or father pressing their faces up against a glass wall, staring at their newborn child in the nursery. But at Parkland, this experience is becoming a rarity thanks to a program that focuses on maximizing the time babies spend in mom’s patient room.

The program, known as “rooming in,” is achieved by taking many of the procedures normally done in Parkland’s Newborn Nursery and moving them into the patient room. First it was done with only four patients per day for 90 days. On Nov. 1 2010, the program was rolled out across Parkland’s Labor & Delivery East unit. At the end of the first 10 weeks, 90 percent of eligible moms on the unit were rooming in.

The program focuses not only on reducing time away from mom, but also utilizing the time they have together with skin-to-skin contact which encourages mother-infant bonding and has also dramatically improved breastfeeding success. Newborns are most alert in the first hour of life and will latch on more quickly. Parkland’s rate of mothers breastfeeding exclusively (meaning the baby never received formula) is normally 11 percent. For mothers in the rooming in program who practiced skin-to-skin contact, that rate has ranged from 30 to 50 percent.

The concept of rooming in is fairly common practice today, but Parkland’s utilization of the Newborn Nursery was mandated by both the physical constraints of the building, as well as large patient volumes. But Parkland has seen a recent decline in birth rates, with nearly 3,000 fewer babies born in fiscal year 2010 than fiscal year 2006. This decline allowed staff the flexibility to look at ways to improve both patient service and healthy outcomes.

“This is a model we know we will use when the new hospital opens in 2014, when babies will never be separated from mom. Implementing it slowly in the current hospital will make that future transition much more seamless,” said Pamela Ford, unit manger of the Newborn Nursery. “In the new hospital, we will have satellite nurseries as opposed to a large central one, and most of our nurses will spend their time in patient rooms.”

The dedication of Parkland staff is key to the success of the program. Newborn Nursery nurses were taken out of their element and had to learn an entirely new environment in the Labor & Delivery units. Labor & Delivery staff also had to learn new workflows and how to use new equipment. But staff was willing to make the change to help their patients and help prepare for life in the new hospital.

“We’ve received comments from patients that it was comforting to have the Newborn Nursery nurses there throughout delivery, admission and discharge,” said Anne Tudhope, director of Maternal Infant Services. “This was a major effort by multiple departments, and in the end everyone came together to better serve our patients.”