Back to Sleep: A Culture Change to Improve Practice

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) remains a significant cause of newborn and infant mortality in the United States. Newborn intensive care unit nurses have a unique opportunity to influence infant outcomes through parent education regarding SIDS prevention. Recently, studies have shown that verbal and written education is not enough impact to alter some parental decisions on sleep position. Parents of premature infants are more than twice as likely to place their infants prone after discharge from a neonatal intensive care unit. These data suggest that parents are more likely to practice what they observe health care providers do than what they say. The unit practice council of a large metropolitan level II newborn intensive care unit used quality improvement processes to affect a change in unit culture to one of safety and quality by implementing evidence-based practice related to SIDS prevention into parent discharge education through a combination of modeling care with traditional teaching strategies.