Tara Sundem, RN, NNP-BC, MS, used to think the best place for babies going through withdrawal was not with their parents. Sundem admits that she, like many of her colleagues, used to judge parents when newborns in her neonatal ICU were going through withdrawal.
The journey started when Sundem was working in a hospital NICU and noticed growing numbers of babies in withdrawal. The opioid epidemic was affecting the most vulnerable at an alarming rate.
Centers for Disease Control reports that there were an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021. Prenatal maternal drug-use has increased considerably in recent years. This increase has contributed to a significant rise in the rate of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS), a collection of symptoms in newborns exposed to any of a variety of substances in utero, including opioids.
Babies born with NAS (neonatal abstinence syndrome), require a complex and painful detoxification process in the days following birth. Nationwide, neonatal abstinence syndrome diagnoses have increased 235% since 2008.
When Tara read the data, it changed her thinking from ‘We have to save the babies,’ to ‘We have to save the families.”
Join Tara and Michael White as they talk about their upstream approach to family preservation.