Meijin Hsiao ’26 (NURS) listens to the heartbeat of an infant-sized nursing manikin in one of the nursing simulation labs in the Widmer Wing of Storrs Hall on Sept. 6, 2024. (Sydney Herdle\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe project was sparked by a conversation with her advisor, Carrie Eaton, about how stressful the process of neonatal resuscitation is for nurses, who are the ones in the delivery room charged with performing the procedure.<\/p>\n
When necessary, nurses perform manual CPR on newborns, including chest compressions and giving breaths, Hsiao explains, and when that doesn\u2019t work, they move to pharmaceutical intervention by administering a stimulant to restart the heart.<\/p>\n
To determine how much epinephrine, the drug that\u2019s most commonly used, to give the baby, they first need to determine the baby\u2019s birth weight with the umbilical cord not yet cut to estimate the fetal weight.<\/p>\n
Simultaneously, in this complex process that requires exceptional teamwork, the nurse assists the resuscitation team with access for medication administration. They also must calculate the correct dose of epinephrine in milligrams per kilogram based on the baby\u2019s weight and then convert it to milliliters for administration \u2013 all under intense pressure.<\/p>\n
They turn to a flow chart and use the information to figure out the correct dose, she adds. It\u2019s this flow chart she\u2019s most critical of because using it can be a cumbersome challenge in a time of urgency.<\/p>\n
Further, there are multiple brands of epinephrine sold to hospitals with each having their own adaptors and connectors to draw up the medication, along with different dosages based on whether it\u2019s administered intravenously or via endotracheal tube.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, nurses don\u2019t necessarily know which brand is at the ready because it can\u2019t be opened until they need it, making each situation even more unique.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stressful on the nurses because of what they\u2019re dealing with, but it\u2019s also stressful on the parents. It\u2019s scary to see your child resuscitated right after birth,\u201d Hsiao says. \u201cIt\u2019s a heartbreaking scene, and in the free response part of my survey, some labor and delivery nurses mentioned that the toughest part is when the parents see all this happening and they\u2019re not able to provide any comfort or consolation.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 10% of newborns require resuscitation. Sometimes it\u2019s unexpected and happens in an uncomplicated pregnancy. Other times the medical team may consider it a probability, as in the case of a pre-term delivery.<\/p>\n
Hsiao says her research shows that while all this is happening \u2013 in a space of about two minutes, because each second without oxygen can be detrimental \u2013 nurses are assessing whether they\u2019ll need to use other pharmaceuticals to counteract a drug or multiple drugs that could have been passed from mother to baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cBabies are so delicate,\u201d she says, \u201cto the point that during CPR you can\u2019t even squeeze the air bag too much because their lungs will inflate too far. They have weaker rib cages when doing compressions, and they breathe faster than adults, so their lungs need to be inflated more frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hsiao says many of the nurses who filled out her survey indicated they also dread neonatal resuscitation because they don\u2019t have much experience with it. Some hospitals have dedicated teams on standby for emergencies, and nurses who work in the NICU, or neonatal intensive care units, also are well versed. But nurses at small or rural hospitals might seldom need to use it.<\/p>\n
Skills get rusty, despite regular training that might be only adequate to begin with, Hsiao adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart just broke when I read some of the deeply personal stories from the nurses who participated in the survey,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t like hearing about babies dying, and I want to prevent that.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Hsiao that starts with studying the nursing experience and one day suggesting ways to improve the dosage chart, so more babies can survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, my parents wanted me to become an MD, but I like nursing because of the patient care side of it,\u201d she says. \u201cDoctors treat the disease, but nurses treat the patient, and I want a connection with my patients. I can\u2019t see myself not going into nursing, it was just a calling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her senior year in 2025-26 will bring a labor and delivery clinical rotation, and for her capstone rotation she says she\u2019s likely to look for a NICU placement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love babies. I\u2019ve always loved babies,\u201d Hsiao says, recalling that the first baby she ever held was her cousin when she was 8 and visiting family in Vietnam. \u201cIt just instantly clicked with me once my aunt gave me my cousin to hold. It was so easy. I instantly knew what to do with her in my arms. It was a special feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Her summer research project studied pharmaceutical methods of neonatal resuscitation and ways to streamline what many nurses describe as a complicated process<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":218335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1877,2231,2076,99,2235,2227,2458],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-218328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nur","category-health-well-being","category-research","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-undergraduates"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 09:16:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218337,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218328\/revisions\/218337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/218335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218328"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=218328"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=218328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Meijin](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/2024-09-06_MeijinHsiaoNursing-2-300x200.jpg\")