Jaundice meters are essential tools for assessing bilirubin levels in newborns, helping to quickly determine whether levels are within the normal range or if a follow-up blood test is needed. These devices are portable, accurate and easy to use - delivering clear benefits for both healthcare professionals and families.
While many hospitals and health centres invest in just one jaundice meter, this is often only a starting point. In this article, we’ll explore why expanding access to multiple devices is a smart, forward-thinking investment - one that enhances care for patients, supports staff efficiency and strengthens your organisation’s overall service delivery.
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Portable Solution for Community Midwives
A key group of professionals that stand to especially benefit from access to a jaundice meter is community midwives. These compact and portable devices are easy to take on home visits, offering reliable measurements that can inform their decision making about the next steps to take based on a baby’s needs.
Reducing Reliance on Visual Detection
When making home visits, many community midwives have to make a decision on whether or not a baby could be jaundiced simply by looking at them. If the baby does appear jaundiced, they may recommend that the baby goes into the local maternity unit for a Transcutaneous Bilirubin (TCB) test to be sure, potentially leading to a blood test.
Similarly, jaundice can be harder to detect in some babies - such as those with darker skin tones. There is always a possibility of human error, in which a baby may be inaccurately identified as ‘normal’, when in fact they could be jaundiced and vice versa.
Having access to a jaundice meter instead gives them an accurate, objective reading of a baby’s bilirubin levels. This helps to eliminate guesswork and improve a midwife’s clinical confidence when making decisions on whether or not the baby will need to have further testing. It also ensures that care decisions are based on consistent, evidence-based data, which is especially valuable in home environments. Over time, this can lead to more efficient use of healthcare resources and better outcomes for babies and families.
Early Detection and Intervention
As already mentioned, jaundice may not always appear to be obvious, especially when it’s early on. On some occasions, this means that it may only be detected when bilirubin levels are quite high and potentially more dangerous.
Even if a baby may not appear significantly jaundiced, a jaundice meter will still detect whether their bilirubin levels are at a level where they require further intervention. This early detection enables timely escalation, with the accuracy of the reading reducing avoidable hospital visits.
Reducing Impact on Parents
The only conclusive way to determine whether or not a baby is jaundiced is through a blood test, however this can be an upsetting experience for parents to witness their baby going through - not to mention uncomfortable and distressing for the baby themself.
Jaundice meters, whilst not a replacement for blood tests, do act as a non-invasive first step that can significantly reduce the number of blood tests that might be needed and the stress that they cause.
Reducing Unnecessary Hospital Visits
If a midwife suspects that a baby could be jaundiced, then they have a professional responsibility to refer them to hospital for a blood test. It could be, however, that the blood test comes back clear and the family is sent back home with no treatment required. This can happen multiple times, thus requiring numerous hospital visits.
These visits can be long, stressful and unsettling. Not only that, but being so soon after birth, this is during the period in which the mother is most at risk of developing postnatal depression. Constantly having to make hospital visits for their newborn baby to have blood tests, then, can have significant effects on parents’ mental health and wellbeing.
When using a jaundice meter, there will be a certain range that, if the baby’s bilirubin levels fall within it, then the midwife must refer them to the hospital. Compared to visual detection, using a jaundice meter provides accurate readings, which are more likely to align with the blood test results.
As seen in the scatter graph below, clinical trials show that there is positive correlation between the measurements taken by the Croyde Jaundice Meter and total levels of bilirubin obtained from blood sampling - highlighting the device's accuracy and reliability.
This can significantly reduce the number of unnecessary hospital visits that families need to make. Instead, should they have to go to hospital, it will more likely result in their baby actually needing and receiving phototherapy treatment.
Less Stress and Anxiety
As already stated, having to make multiple hospital visits can be extremely stressful. Naturally, hospitals can be anxiety-inducing environments - especially for parents worried about the health of their newborn baby.
Not only do they have to be separated from their child, but seeing the marks left on their baby’s heel and hearing them cry after each blood test can be equally distressing.
When a referral to the hospital is based on the results of a jaundice meter, it helps reassure parents that the decision is grounded in evidence, thus encouraging them to trust the care decisions being made. Instead of feeling uncertain or stressed about whether the hospital visit is truly necessary, they can feel confident that the trip is justified and that their baby will receive appropriate care.
The Bottom Line
So, why does this mean you should invest in multiple jaundice meters? Whilst it’s unreasonable to expect every midwife to have access to their own meter, having multiple meters available at one central healthcare base does allow them to take a jaundice meter with them to home visits when necessary, whilst ensuring there is still one available at the hospital or health centre itself.
For example, with multiple jaundice meters available, community midwives would have the flexibility to bring one to home visits and use it as needed. Alternatively, if a meter were accessible at a central community base, it could be more efficient for the midwife to collect it or for parents to travel a shorter distance for the TCB test - avoiding the need to visit the maternity unit.
By monitoring jaundice progression and resolution in this way, they are able to provide better continuity and quality of care. This is especially important in rural and underserved areas, promoting equitable newborn care.
Furthermore, the aforementioned benefits for community midwives and parents can subsequently benefit healthcare settings themselves. How? By offering accurate and initial screening and limiting hospital referrals to those that really need it, jaundice meters can effectively help reduce:
- Overcrowding
- Resource waste
- Healthcare costs
Get in Touch
If you think your establishment could benefit from more jaundice meters and would like to learn more about how we can help, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch!