Do newborn intensive care unit staff know the gender and first names of their patients?

We studied whether or not our personnel knew the gender and first names of their neonatal patients. A volunteer high-school student interviewed 18 NICU nurses without their awareness as to the true nature of the study. While asking open-ended questions, the interviewer would listen for the newborn to be correctly or incorrectly identified by gender and first name. Of the 42 newborns, incorrect gender identification was observed for six (14%) of them. The first name was unknown for 12 (29%) of the 42 infants. When combining both gender and name recognition 11 (61%) of the 18 nurses had an incorrect response for at least one of their patients. Initial day contact and infrequent parental visitations were identified as possible reasons for lack of gender and/or name awareness. Referring to neonatal patients by both their first and last names may be helpful in improving gender and name acknowledgement.