AWHONN: Trusted Leaders Infant Fall Prevention

We were honoured and thrilled to have been included in AWHONN's (The Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses) film, "Trusted Leaders".

#TrustedLeaders #AWHONN2017

Learn more about AWHONN, here.

Read the full transcript from the video below.

"Now providing care and safety for mothers and newborn infants is priority number one for any facility and their healthcare staff. Joeyband by SleepBelt, a hands-free skin-to-skin support system, is helping reduce infant falls with a simple and cost-efficient solution. The health and developmental benefits of skin-to-skin contact are so significant that the World Health Organization recommends it for all newborns. However, certain child delivery methods can present challenges and obstacles for mothers and nurses.

Skin-to-skin is such a huge initiative and it's really difficult to do, especially in settings like the OR where the mom is medicated, doesn't have use of her arms, or where, if she's lucky, a nurse or dad will physically hold the baby on her for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes is great, but the recommendation is 60 minutes of uninterrupted skin-to-skin, referred to as the 'golden hour', which is 60 minutes of uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact within the first 60 minutes of childbirth. The importance of this is linked to baby's development, breastfeeding, and bonding. Joeyband by SleepBelt supports safe skin-to-skin in the NICU, recovery, and the LR.

What we're excited about is that Joeyband is able to facilitate that uninterrupted skin-to-skin. The baby can be placed on the mom, on the table, secured with the band, and they can stay together through transport and into recovery. When we use the Joeyband and when we do skin-to-skin with a new mom, it helps regulate the baby's body temperature, the mom's body temperature, creating an equilibrium that exists. It's really amazing. The babies tend not to cry when they're skin-to-skin, which is great to see as opposed to having them under the warmer.

Joeyband by SleepBelt is a patented, gentle, soft, and stretchy belt helping keep the baby positioned properly and securely, and it's providing hospitals with a simple solution to promote skin-to-skin and help prevent infant falls, impacting not only safety but also quality of care and patient satisfaction with huge economic benefits.

You're looking for some sort of product for our operating room to do skin-to-skin with our new moms. We've been doing skin-to-skin with our vaginal deliveries for a long time, and we really wanted our C-section moms to have that experience as well,' especially the Joeyband in an operating room scenario. The new practice is to put the baby skin-to-skin immediately after delivery. That gets a little dicey in an OR, but with the Joeyband to secure the infants to the mother's breast, babies will settle right down and, if positioned at the right angle, will nuzzle over and actually initiate feeding while the doctor is finishing on the other side of the drape.

In the postpartum period, obviously, a woman who's had surgery is going to be on pain medications that can make her very sleepy, and we're always saying skin-to-skin, skin-to-skin, all the time. These moms often get very sleepy when they're holding their baby, so we can secure the baby onto mom's chest with the Joeyband, less chance of the mother falling deep asleep and dropping her baby.

'I really could have used one of these with my first,' said a mother. 'I had a really long labor that ended in a C-section, and I was just so exhausted. I would wake up with her about to roll off of me, and even with the guardrails in place.' Infant falls are a growing problem with the skin-to-skin initiative, and they don't have to be. The cost of an infant fall, we know from an expert witness, is that $442 million for a fall, unfortunately resulting in death, and about 10 to 12 million dollars for skull fractures, and that simply doesn't have to happen.

If we're advising parents to do as much skin-to-skin as often as possible, we need to provide them with the tools to do it safely. By sending a Joeyband home with every parent, you're ensuring that not only are they doing it safely, but you're hopefully encouraging them to do it. That's where the long-term outcomes really improve. That's where your exclusive breastfeeding rates are going to increase, that's where postpartum depression is going to decrease, and that's where parents are going to be bonding with their baby.

Raising awareness of skin-to-skin contact and infant falls is a challenge that the Joeyband by SleepBelt is helping to address. This is being achieved by providing hospitals with a simple, cost-efficient solution. 'It really is a big improvement for the hospital, and now with this band, we're just going to be increasing our skin-to-skin. Our staff is really amazing, everyone is really on board, and you know, whatever we can do to try to make a patient's day safer and their satisfaction better. Really, it's a win-win for my own baby and us as a hospital.'