A Day In The Life Of Nurse Lien

I am Lien, I am nurse in the NICU at Da Nang Hospital for Women and Children. I graduated from nursing school 1.5 years ago. I have worked in the Da Nang neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for one year.

Working in the NICU is a very hard job but it is a great privilege for me – a young nurse – to be there to care for little babies who are in critical situations and need a lot of care and love. In the NICU, one of us has to care for at least 6 babies during our shift. This is not an easy task because we have to put in IV lines, prepare medicines and administer them, prepare milk and feed the babies and many other nursing jobs.

I used to be afraid when I first came to the NICU as I thought it would be really difficult to care for someone who could not say what they needed. But now I think I can interact with these babies. My senior colleagues help me understand what the baby says even with wordless expression. Our NICU has become a second home of mine, where I have good colleagues and more importantly, I love caring for all the babies and I want to help them fight against any illness. We cannot change the congenital problems but we can absolutely change the outcome of the baby with disease by our care.

I hope we will have more nurses and also have special courses about neonatal nursing care in Da Nang, so we could provide better care for our sick babies.