Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Project – Full Written

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Committee Chair

Jessica Ivey

Abstract

Sleep is a fundamental requirement for the human body to achieve and sustain overall health and well-being. In Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU), sleep is a vital step in an infant’s routine to allow for proper neurodevelopment and growth. Parents of infants in the NICU may be unaware of the critical role sleep plays in their child’s health. Without realizing it, they can unintentionally disrupt their infant’s sleep by speaking loudly, using bright lights, or playing loud sounds from their phone. This DNP project was created to increase NICU parent education on the importance of sleep promotion and involve them in direct patient care when creating “low stimulation” environments. By utilizing the “Educational Sleep Card” and “NICU Sleep Checklist”, parents were able to become directly involved in creating a “low stimulation” environment for their infant and learn why sleep promotion is of the utmost importance for proper development and growth. The project consisted of a pre-test prior to the implementation of the educational materials and a post-test afterward. The objective outcome of this project was to increase parental knowledge regarding sleep promotion for the NICU infant by 25% after 1 month of using the “NICU Sleep Checklist” tool. This outcome was achieved and surpassed by showing a 43.8% increase in overall parental knowledge on the post-test compared to the pre-test. Education geared toward the importance of sleep promotion is a simple and effective way to increase parental knowledge, gain confidence in caring for their child, and improve the NICU infant’s environment.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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