Collaboration of Care Providers Online Course(s) & Continuing Education

Beneath the surface of every labor and delivery room interaction between physicians, nurses, and patients (as well as their partners) vibrate the pressures of power. Who is in charge? Regardless of the stated beliefs or legal truth about who IS in charge, the dance between the characters in the labor room often plays out archetypally. Archetypes are a recurrent symbol or motif found in literature, art, or mythology that live within the unconscious influencing how individuals behave, think, and feel. While many archetypal energies are possible during labor, the dominant archetypal energies active in a labor room tend to vacillate between that of Caretaker, Orphan, Ruler, Hero, Innocent, and Warrior. Nurses, often drawn to the career to help others, connect with the Caretaker archetype. However, due in part to hierarchical structures within the hospital setting, nurses can be left feeling unseen, undervalued, or powerless activating the Orphan archetype. Comparable patterns can be observed in obstetricians with the Ruler and Hero and in parents with the Innocent and Warrior archetypes. Without consciousness of the power dynamics between these archetypal energies, satisfaction in both the process and outcome is often fleeting for parents and can lead to burnout in professionals. Greater understanding of the needs of each activated archetype provides individuals needed guidance in how to better navigate labor room power dynamics and why doing so matters profoundly.

The role of nurses has often been dictated by those outside the profession. First, we were seen as doctors' handmaidens, which informed a collective consciousness that we were only valuable in support of paternalistic healthcare. As the role of nurses expanded, the public came to recognize our unique skills, identified us as the most trustworthy profession over two decades, and labeled us heroes. In response, we have positioned ourselves as a neutral identity that is "just there to help." However, this helper or savior identity has several negative ramifications including a preoccupation with how our care might be judged in the event of an unexpected outcome, which ultimately creates a divide between us & those in our care. Nurses benefit from identification of and reflection on their motivation for pursuing nursing, their current care practices, and how they can shift their mindset to release the rigidity, guilt, and fear that is associated with saviorism. We cannot allow patterns of saviorism to continue to dominate our profession. The health of our patients & ourselves depends on us stepping away from "helping" and into a standard of trauma-informed advocacy.

How much crying is too much crying? When parents reach out with questions about their babies crying, what parameters are available to help guide them to understand their infants? This session will aim to guide professionals who support the newborn family, including offering guidelines for number of hours that are considered normal, descriptions of high and low criers, timelines of expected crying, and solutions and alternatives when the typical approaches don’t seem to work. Utilizing the research on the Crying Curve--a pattern of crying beginning at about 42 weeks of gestation, peaking at 6-8 weeks of age, and sharply declining by 12-15 weeks--parents can navigate newborn life according to their gestational age. 15 different studies have concluded that this pattern is common across infants of all cultures, gestational ages (based on a 40-week gestation), and parenting styles—and the applications are many in the early parenting world. Help families learn to utilize this model to help assess their newborn. Multiple models of interpreting newborn crying from body language to sound and tone to help interpret newborn needs will be shared. Let’s move beyond reassuring parents that “colic” will end by 3 months and offer them solutions and alternatives.