I am trying to catch up, I’m still on the previous thread and think there will be a new one before I get to this one.
I was a neonatal nurse, 11 years ago now. I will try as others have to answer any questions etc, but be aware that best practices change, especially after more than 10 years although many fundamentals stay the same.
I have thought about this, an honestly I worked in a brilliant NICU (high dependency)which was also a SCBU (for babies who need help feeding mainly)
Our high dependency was a room with a 360 nurses station in the middle and incubators around the walls, hope that explains it.
But people get busy, and engrossed in what they are doing. Often babies would stop breathing, (and this might sound awful) but a quick tap of the pedal to make the incubator move up or down would be enough to give the baby a little shock and remind them that they need to breathe. (I have seen people asking how common these deteriorations can be) in my experience these little episodes are quite frequent. The only child death we had in the three years while I worked there was a full term baby who had complications, very sick babies were transferred to a specialist children's hospital close by.
There are numerous times in a day when you are preoccupied with your patients, talking to parents, or simply running to the lav, simple things happen numerous times a day where your trusting your colleagues and they have times where they are ‘unsupervised’
She could have easily had syringes prepared with medication in her pocket, just waiting on an opportunity to strike. So in plain sight if you understand me.
I don’t really know my point in saying this, it has probably been covered 100s of times, but I feel better getting it off my chest and sharing.