By Jayley Handley, KL, Vice President of Administration
September 15th is Neonatal Nurses Day, so I thought I would take the opportunity to share a little about what I do outside of the Sorority, how I found my way into the NICU, and why I love it!
For those who don’t know, I am a nurse in a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Boston, where I care for premature and critically ill newborns ranging from extremely premature babies weighing barely a pound to full-term newborns who need additional support after birth.
NICU nursing is a unique combination of critical care, developmental care, and family-centered care. Our babies may require ventilators or other breathing support, IV medications, specialized nutrition, feeding tubes, central lines, frequent labs, and continuous monitoring. Because they can’t tell us when something is wrong, a huge part of our job is learning their normal behaviors and recognizing even the smallest changes in their breathing, vital signs, color, activity, or feeding.
Our care also changes tremendously as our patients grow. We may go from managing significant respiratory support and IV nutrition to helping that same baby maintain their temperature, learn to eat, gain weight, and prepare to go home.Getting to follow that progression is one of the things that makes neonatal nursing so special.
My favorite part of NICU nursing is watching my patients improve, grow, reach milestones, and eventually “graduate” and go home. We may care for a baby for days, weeks, or even months, so seeing how far they come is incredibly rewarding. Things that might seem small outside of the NICU become huge accomplishments: gaining weight, coming off respiratory support, taking a first bottle, moving into an open crib, having a feeding tube removed, or finally getting ready for discharge.
Just as importantly, NICU nurses care for the family alongside the baby. Having a baby in the NICU can be an incredibly stressful and emotional experience. Instead of bringing their newborn home, parents may suddenly find themselves surrounded by monitors, alarms, medical equipment, and an entire healthcare team. Part of our role is helping parents feel like parents in an environment that can sometimes make that difficult. We teach them to participate in their baby’s care, answer questions, encourage bonding, celebrate progress, and support them through setbacks and difficult days. Being able to support both my patients and their families throughout that experience is one of the things I love most about what I do.
My path to the NICU wasn’t something I completely planned out. During nursing school, I took advantage of opportunities that gave me experience while helping me figure out what areas of nursing interested me. I worked as a CNA and completed nursing externships in both the adult ICU and NICU. After graduating I started my nursing career Adult ICU during the Pandemic and this is where I spent my first two years as a nurse. As I gained experience, I kept thinking back to how much I had enjoyed my NICU externship and eventually decided to make the transition to the NICU. My adult ICU experience became an important stepping stone that gave me a strong critical care foundation while also giving me time to figure out where I wanted my career to go next.
Since transitioning to the NICU, continuing to grow professionally has become really important to me. I have earned my RNC-NIC certification for Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing and my C-ELBW certification, which focuses on caring for extremely low birth weight infants. There is always more to learn in nursing, and continuing to expand my knowledge challenges me to become a better nurse and resource for my patients, their families, and my coworkers.
If I could give any advice from my college years and career so far, it would be to take every opportunity you can to grow professionally and expand your knowledge. Apply for the internship or externship, attend the training, take the class, pursue the certification, ask questions, and put yourself in situations where you can learn something new. Not every opportunity needs to fit perfectly into your plan or lead directly to your dream job to be valuable.
Use those opportunities to make connections and build relationships too. You never know when a professor, coworker, mentor, supervisor, or someone else you meet along the way will teach you something, encourage you to pursue an opportunity, or help open a door later. You also don’t need to know exactly where you’re going yet. Sometimes an experience you have now becomes important to your path much later.
NICU nursing can be challenging, emotional, and unpredictable, but it is also incredibly rewarding. I get to advocate for some of the tiniest and most vulnerable patients, support families through a time in their lives they will never forget, celebrate the little victories, and watch babies who once needed intensive care grow stronger and eventually go home with their families.
