"My Baby's Sleep": A Quality Improvement Project to Promote Safe and Healthy Sleep Practices

Introduction Promoting healthy sleep practices from birth has a positive effect on infants and their families. Our goal was to implement measures to promote safe and healthy sleep practices for infants and to evaluate their impact. Methods A quality improvement project was developed in the maternity ward of a level II hospital in Portugal. The study comprised three phases: evaluation of the information provided to parents and infants' sleep habits by a telephone survey between two and three months of age; intervention through the application of measures, which included informative leaflets, posters, and training sessions for medical and nursing staff; and evaluation of the implemented measures after one year, applying the same survey. Results We recorded an increase of 13% in parents informed about safe sleep surfaces (p=0.001) and position (p<0.001). Additionally, 19.3% more infants were sleeping in the supine position (p<0.001). Only 74.7% were sleeping in a crib, and bed sharing was still a common practice (20.9%). Regarding sleep habits, we recorded a 7.6% increase in infants sleeping in the dark at night (p=0.216), and a 17.2% increase in the use of the night light (p=0.003) for diaper changes/feeding. Discussion Our project was effective in improving parents' knowledge concerning safe sleep practices, increasing the proportion of infants sleeping in the supine position, and reducing light exposure at night. However, we had no effect on bed sharing, which remains frequent, related to our population's cultural background.