“The chorus has gotten louder against Finnegan,” said Dr. Stephanie Merhar of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who has been a Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome attending doctor for 10 years. "Often by mothers."
The problem with Finnegan? "There is a huge swing of difference in scores between nurses,” Merhar said.
It was so obvious in some cases even new mothers could see the problem.
Axl sleeps on his mom in a pod in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Elizabeth Healthcare Edgewood Hospital shortly after he was born.
Hurley says she saw it with her first son.
“One nurse would score him for sneezing three times in a row, and the other wouldn’t. One nurse would score him for a poopy diaper. The other one wouldn’t.”
Hurley says Axl got good medical care at St. Elizabeth-Edgewood, and it turned out he was not given medication. But she was confused and upset with the Finnegan scoring. And she felt that some nurses discounted her ability to be a mother.
“I knew that they weren’t talking to me the same way as other mothers,” she recalls. “One nurse said, ‘This is very serious Ms. Hurley.’ I’m like, ‘I’m aware of that.’”
Other mothers have those same feelings, Merhar said.
"Moms feel a big loss of control with the Finnegan method," she told learners at the summer speaker event. “We as medical professionals have probably made it worse.”
