NICU Process Improvement Project
SIDS is a sudden and unexplained death that usually occurs while the infant is asleep. Placing the infant on his/her back to sleep and other safe sleep practices have shown to reduce incidence of SIDS. Since parents tend to follow practices that they observe in the hospital setting, staff should be vigilant in teaching and modeling the supine sleep position and safe sleep guidelines.
A Safe Sleep Task Force was created last June, 2009 and it includes staff nurses, rehabilitation, the medicine administrative director, the continuity of care coordinator and the educator. They created guidelines based on evidence from studies and other units’ practices. A pre-implementation survey was conducted and mandatory in-services were given over a period of 2 weeks. The staff was instructed to begin implementing the information they learned from the in-services. After one month, a post-implementation survey was conducted and there was marked improvement in the staff’s behaviors and attitudes about infant’s safe sleep.
The NICU staff has started to implement safe sleep by initiating discussions with parents and caregivers and modeling safe sleep practices to them.
A poster about this process improvement project was also created and presented by NICU educator, Irene Lopez RNC at UTHSCSA. Click to view poster.