Date of Award

5-12-2026

Degree Type

Evidence-Based Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

First Advisor

Kristine Davis

Abstract

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is the exposure in utero to drugs with the incidence in the United States increasing from 4 to 6.3 per 1000 births (Wei et al., 2023). The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement a breastfeeding support intervention to increase breastfeeding frequency and reduce hospital length of stay of newborns with NAS. A tailored multicomponent guideline based upon the current Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding as established by WHO and UNICEF (2017) was implemented. Mothers of infants diagnosed with NAS were recruited using convenience sampling from a Northwest Indiana Hospital. Key stakeholders within the hospital were educated on the guideline and breastfeeding was encouraged for eligible mothers. Time from newborn birth to newborn discharge and feeding method were recorded. A total of 14 mothers were included (10 pre-intervention, 4 post-intervention) to determine length of stay and breastfeeding frequency. Mean maternal age was similar between groups (33 vs. 30 years). The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) was employed and the statistical analysis utilized descriptive statistics and a Fisher’s Exact Test. Mean time to discharge (length of stay) decreased from 133 hours pre-intervention to 93.2 hours post-intervention (median 110.0 vs. 87.5 hours). Women in the pre-intervention group had higher relative risks of bottle feeding and abnormal discharge. Implementation of a breastfeeding support guideline was not statistically significant but was found to be clinically significant in reduction in length of stay as findings were limited by small sample size. Further research is needed to evaluate the impact of breastfeeding promotion on outcomes for infants with NAS.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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