Diane Moskal waited 14 years to see new parents and their babies get some sunshine.
Moskal is retired now, having worked for 37 years at in Troy, where she ended her full-time tenure as the clinical nurse manager of the neonatal intensive care unit and pediatrics. But on June 7, she was on hand to see a group of parents βparadeβ their babies into the new unit β and out of the old.
βItβs exciting because it needed to happen,β she says.
The hospitalβs old NICU, she says, was in desperate need of updating. There were no windows, no natural light, no privacy for new (not to mention worried) mothers to learn how to breastfeed, let alone just be alone with their newborns. If parents wanted to stay overnight near their baby, they had to hope that a nearby hospital room was open.
Such issues arenβt uncommon for older NICUs, she says.
Now, the new $8 million has a parentsβ lounge, showers, state-of-the-art equipment, and, perhaps most important of all, 25 private and semiprivate rooms β all with windows β where parents can stay with their babies 24/7.
The emphasis of the new NICU isnβt just the physical health of the babies but the emotional and mental well-being of the babies and their parents.
βItβs what we call patient-family-centered care,β says Tedra Boedigheimer, director of nursing for womenβs and childrenβs services at Beaumont Health.
A 2020 study in The Journal of Pediatrics looked at 331 NICUs and found that only 13.3 percent offered infant-parent rooms and that such rooms correlated with lower morbidityΜύand sickness rates and faster recovery times. A 2017 articleΜύin the journal said the direct maternal contact that such rooms provide was the βsecret sauceβΜύto ensuring positive long-term outcomes for infants.
Jeremy and Melissa Livingston can attest to that.
The Livingstons were the first family to experience the new NICU with their baby, Roman.
A case of preeclampsia sent Melissa to the hospital, resulting in an induced delivery five weeks before her due date, which caused Roman to be born with lungs that werenβt fully developed.
That was in May, before the new NICU was open. She described the old NICU as βnot private,β saying that it felt βeven dark when the lights were on.β The care, she says, was top notch, but the environment was not ideal.
When they transferred to their new room with a view of a golf course, everything changed.
βYou walk into this place and itβs like youβre at the Hilton,β Melissa says during ±α΄Η³ά°ωβs interview and tour of the NICU.ΜύMelissa and Jeremy sat in the two reclining chairs in the room, turned inward toward each other with a small table between them, looking like a corner of any living room aside from the fact that they faced a babyβs incubator. The chairs recline so that parents can sleep in the same room as their babies each night.
That closeness to their baby β as well as the simple addition of a window β was everything, Jeremy says.
βThereβs sunlight and thereβs greenery and thereβs clouds. And when he [Roman] came into the new NICU was when his progress really took off,β he says.
The new NICU also features a parentsβ lounge with some couches, a TV, and a full kitchen stocked with snacks and coffee.
βItβs good for them to get away. Itβs a little serene area in there,β Boedigheimer says.
Plans for the new NICU began in 2008 but were paused due to the recession. The idea didnβt pick back up until 2017, with plans to build the new space in 2020 before COVID-19 brought them to a halt. Finally, as the pandemic beganΜύto wane, Moskal was able to see the vision sheβd helped form come to fruition. Moskal still works part time in the unit β alongside her successorΜύas clinical nurse manager, Bridget Poley, who also witnessed the transition of families from the old NICU to the new.
βSeeing the families react to it,β Poley says, βit is amazing.β
This story is from the feature in the OctoberΜύ2022 issue of ΒιΆΉ·¬ΊΕ Detroit magazine. Read more inΜύour digital edition.
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