Infant Safe Sleep

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Infant Safe Sleep: Literature Review Summary and Narrative As a nurse, I have cared for many infants in the twenty years I have worked in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). However, it wasn’t until recently that I questioned the sleep environment of the voiceless infants in my care. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 3,500 sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs)—deaths among infants younger than one year of age… occur in the United States each year (Zachritz, Fulmer, & Chaney, 2016, p. 48). Many of these deaths are related to accidental suffocation or strangulation related to unsafe sleep environments. With this knowledge, I was determined to become a voice for the infants in my care and advocate for a safe sleep environment in the NICU where I am employed. Through literature review, I realized the answer to infant safe sleep was not only in the hands of the nurse caring for the infants while in the NICU, but in the hands of the pediatricians caring for them once they left the hospital, and their mothers or care providers in the home setting.
NICU Nurses
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Research indicates that while nurses have been failing at both of these task, much progress is being made to correct the situation. Nurses are using qualitative research to describe experiences related to infant safe sleep and quantitative research to gather data on how effective infant safe sleep practices are once implemented. I reviewed three research articles, one qualitative and two quantitative, related to safe sleep in the hospital