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In This Issue:
Kelli Smith and Kristen Hall create scrapbooks for NICU parents.
Losing a newborn is one of the most difficult events anyone can experience. NICU nurses handle such events with the utmost compassion, and two nurses in particular have found a creative way to comfort parents.
Kelli Smith, RN, and Kristen Hall, RN, put together bereavement books with pictures, handprints, footprints and other mementos from the baby's life. The nurses received funding for supplies for the books through a 2005 Thomson Compassionate Care Scholar award, which recognizes BWHers dedicated to providing compassionate care. Thankfully, there are few events that warrant the books, but when the books are presented, families find them a useful coping mechanism for years to come.
"Some of the families find it very helpful to have pictures," Smith said. "The books are a nice memento of their child."
With digital cameras, the nurses take photos of the newborns during their lives and immediately after they pass away. The photos are placed in books with brightly colored pages, ribbons and other soft touches. "These are their only photographs of their child," Hall said.
Smith and Hall learned just how comforting a photo could be from one NICU father. During another craft project, they had created cards for all NICU parents to celebrate New Year's Day. Each baby's photo was put in the center of a star on the cover of the card. One father whose child passed away shortly after the holiday said he would forever cherish that photograph. "He said he would always use it as the star on the top of his Christmas tree," Hall said.
Not every parent finds that photographs are comforting; for some, they are too difficult to look at. Hall and Smith use discretion in selecting families who would like to have these books.
Hall and Smith, who also run scrapbooking classes for NICU parents, complete the bereavement books and other craft projects on their own time, showing just how committed they are to caring for patients and families.
For information on other 2005 Compassionate Care projects, see the insert.