Date of Conferral

2019

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

School

Nursing

Advisor

Janice M. Long

Abstract

Sudden unexplained infant death (SUID) is a sudden death of an infant under 1 year of age that cannot be explained after an investigation or an autopsy. SUID is the leading cause of infant deaths in the United States; SUID is considered a sentinel event to the birth hospital. Birth hospitals are held accountable for education, training, and role modeling of infant safe sleep practices (SSP) to reduce infant sleep-related deaths up to 1 year of age. This educational project was designed to answer the project-focused question of whether the implementation of an evidence-based, safe sleep training program for nurses would improve their knowledge of SSP. Bandura's social cognitive theory and the root cause analysis theory were used to guide the project that provided education on SSP and methods for teaching SSP for 48 nurses who work in a postpartum unit in a large hospital in the northeastern United States. A search of the literature provided the content from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for the education program and served the basis for the 15-item multiple-choice test, which was used for the pretest, posttest design project. The test was administered to the nurse participants who ranged in education from associate degree, baccalaureate degree, to master's degrees. The project goal was to increase nurses' knowledge by training and role modeling infant safe sleep environments and to reduce SUIDs. Results of the pretest and posttest evaluation revealed significant improvement in test scores from a pretest M = 72.9 to a posttest M = 90.0 (p <.05). The implications of this project for social change are that each nurse's knowledge and abilities to teach parents and families about SUID prevention strategies improve, sudden infant deaths may decrease in this hospital setting.

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