Dear Interns,
Welcome to the NICU.
This is a strange place, a unique culture with its own language and customs. The inhabitants we serve range from tiny, barely-viable premies through “big” term babies with multiple complex and often life-threatening anomalies. Their dwelling-places seem overrun by a tangle of tubes and wires and lights and beeping and numbers. We, their multitudinous attendants, are an odd and quirky mix, each with our own role, our own focus, our own perspective.
This is, in fact, a place where it’s easy to feel like a stranger. But I want you to realize that you are welcome.
True, you will find that many of us who’ve chosen to hang out here tend toward the controlling, detail-focused, needing-to-be-right — even more than the average medical professional. But I hope you’ll also find that as we’ve been welcomed by the NICU, it has grown us right along with the babies. We’re learning patience from the daily litany of weights and vitals and diaper contents and lab values, the habitual practices of making incremental ventilator tweaks and nutritional adjustments, the faithful observation of small developmental steps. We’re learning compassion from walking with families through agonizing, unpredictable life changes. We’re learning humility from dealing with our individual differences and limitations — from realizing that we all need each other in order to help our charges grow up more fully into their own created selves, and to help their families welcome them.
I don’t think I have to tell you that this place is full of fascinating developmental physiology and pathology. And you’ll probably find for yourselves that it’s also full of heartrending and heartwarming stories. My hope is that, as you open yourself to learn here, you’ll grow too. Don’t worry about having all the answers, all the plans, all the control — or any of the above. Bring what you have, and join the NICU family. We’re honored to welcome you.