The first 12 hours of a neonates life is the most critical time in which hypothermia can set in. For 9 months the child is in a warm amniotic sac where coldness is never felt. Once the neonate experiences extrauterine life, the neonate is now at risk for cold stress (Durham, 2014, p. 377). There are four different ways in which a neonate can loose heat; these four are radiation, convection, conduction, and evaporation. Studies have shown that the nurses procedures have a major effect on heat loss in a neonate. Procedures such as taking vital signs, suctioning, repositioning, umbilical line insertion, intubations, obtaining chest x-rays, and manipulating intravenous lines show a decrease in the neonates temperature (Knobel, 2010). Due to so many procedures having to be done on an infant to make sure they are healthy when
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Evaporation is when moisture from a wet body dissipates heat (Silvestri, 2014, p. 388). The first intervention a nurse should perform to prevent radiation immediately after birth is to dry the neonate off with a warm blanket and place him/her on the mother. Drying the neonate helps suck up the moisture from the baby being inside the mother and placing the neonate on moms chest helps regulate the temperature with skin-to-skin contact, or also known as kangaroo care. Neonates do not shiver to produce heat like an adult does, they have brown fat deposits which produce their heat for them (Silvestri, 2014, p.388). One of the biggest and most important interventions the nurse must do and teach the parents is to swaddle the neonate in a blanket and keep a hat on them due to the fact that neonates lose a lot of heat through their head. For preterm babies, a plastic bag can be wrapped around them to mimic the amniotic sac and keep heat around the baby’s body (Petty, 2013). If the preterm baby needs to be placed in an incubator, body humidification can be added (Petty,
Evaporation is when moisture from a wet body dissipates heat (Silvestri, 2014, p. 388). The first intervention a nurse should perform to prevent radiation immediately after birth is to dry the neonate off with a warm blanket and place him/her on the mother. Drying the neonate helps suck up the moisture from the baby being inside the mother and placing the neonate on moms chest helps regulate the temperature with skin-to-skin contact, or also known as kangaroo care. Neonates do not shiver to produce heat like an adult does, they have brown fat deposits which produce their heat for them (Silvestri, 2014, p.388). One of the biggest and most important interventions the nurse must do and teach the parents is to swaddle the neonate in a blanket and keep a hat on them due to the fact that neonates lose a lot of heat through their head. For preterm babies, a plastic bag can be wrapped around them to mimic the amniotic sac and keep heat around the baby’s body (Petty, 2013). If the preterm baby needs to be placed in an incubator, body humidification can be added (Petty,