Kathleen is a Registered Nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. After a successful internship with the hospital while at Villanova, Kathleen started working full-time after graduating. She encourages interested students to not learn just the technical aspects, but to really hone their interpersonal skills. Bonding and communicating with patients and their families is a large part of her 12-hour day.
Transcript
>> My name is Kathleen Barcelato [assumed spelling]. I'm a registered nurse at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Ever day is always different. But I work 12-hour shifts, so a 12-hour day could be hours longer -- but busy at times, not busy. I just work with babies in the NICU. Even if it's just a regular day, it's, you know, your regular nursing thing: so vitals and caring for the baby. But especially at CHOP -- the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia -- it's more important they, like - like a family-centered care. So it's very important to, like, be personable with the family, and you include them in everything you do with the baby. So besides, like, your regular nursing -- things like vitals and diaper changes and such -- it's about including everyone and kind of working with a whole team. But then you can have a day where someone's coding and everything is just going crazy. So usually it can mean 7 a to 7 p, or 7 p to 7 a. So you clock in 5 minutes before 7:00. You go to report; it takes about a half hour. It sometimes can be longer. And then you go through your safety checks, we call them. And you start your day kind of making your lists and being very organized about what you have to do for the day, like meds and care. The craziest days I've had, it happens when you have an extremely busy patient, which means - we call them, like, "sick babies," where they become a one-to-one, which is a nurse on one baby, because they just need a lot of care and attention and such like that. So when there is a lot of those and there is not enough nurses, you have no help, really. Like, there is always someone to -- if there is an emergency -- to kind of help you. But you are constantly running, constantly getting meds, asking people for help. You kind of have to run your day with everybody else being busy, so it's just a whirlwind and you end the day exhausted.
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