Abstract

Background: Every day in America, healthy infants are dying from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other sleep-related deaths. Once a terrifying mystery, these deaths, also called sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), are now considered preventable (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2016). SUID rates in the United States have remained stagnant and unacceptably high since the late 1990’s despite known modifiable risk factors (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2017). These rates are higher than most other developed nations (MacDorman, Matthews, Mohangoo, & Zeitlin, 2014). Although prevention strategies are evidence-based and generally known and understood by nurses, studies have shown inconsistent, incorrect, or incomplete education being provided to parents and caregivers around the time of birth (Eisenberg, et al., 2015; Gaydos et al., 2015).Â

Purpose: In the fall of 2015 the Association of Women’s health, Obstetrics, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) asked the author to write a practice guideline on the topic of safe infant sleep. The purpose of this project was to develop an evidence-based practice guideline for perinatal nurses and leaders. As part of the guideline development, and to establish content validity, a formal appraisal of the guideline by perinatal nurse leaders was conducted using the AGREE II (Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation) instrument (AGREE Enterprise, n.d.)

Approach: The appraisal project was a two-phase, non-experimental, descriptive, mixed-methods design using an online survey approach. A convenience sample of perinatal nurse- leaders from a variety of settings was sought. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the quantitative results and qualitative data are reported verbatim due to the small number of comments returned.

Results: Twenty six nurse-leader participants were invited with 15 completing the phase-one survey (57.7%), and 10 completing both phase-one and two (38.5% overall response rate). One hundred percent of the participants rated the guideline as either the “highest possible” or “high quality.” All participants recommended the guideline for use, and 90% (n=9) reported having taken, or planned to take action, since reading the practice guideline. Qualitative data was generally positive with three specific suggestions for changes provided.

Conclusions: This practice guideline has the potential to help individual nurses improve their safe sleep knowledge, practice, and teaching strategies, as well as to help perinatal nurse-leaders conduct large scale safe sleep quality improvement projects.

Author Details

Sharon C. Hitchcock MSN, RNC-MNN. For further information or discussion regarding this manuscript, please contact the author by email: schitchcock@email.arizona.edu

Sigma Membership

Unknown

Lead Author Affiliation

Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Type

DNP Capstone Project

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Clinical Practice Guideline(s)

Research Approach

Mixed/Multi Method Research

Keywords:

Sudden Infant Death, Safe Infant Sleep, SIDS, Intervention, Quality Improvement, Prevention, Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, SUID

Advisor

Karnitschnig, Laura Marie

Second Advisor

Goldsmith, Melissa

Third Advisor

Miller, Connie S.

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Northern Arizona University

Degree Year

2017

Rights Holder

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All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

Faculty Approved: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Self-submission

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