Educating Nurses to Improve Awareness and Use of a Human Milk Feeding Care Pathway for Opioid-Exposed Neonates.

Objective: To increase nurses' awareness and use of a human milk feeding (HMF) and opioid use disorder (OUD) standardized care pathway to improve rates of HMF at discharge in opioid-exposed neonates (OENs).

Design: Quality improvement project.

Setting/local Problem: Underutilizing an HMF and OUD standardized care pathway in an academic medical center led to declining HMF rates at discharge.

Participants: Staff nurses in the women and infants department (N = 311).

Intervention/measurements: Nurses completed an asynchronous online educational module regarding awareness and use of the HMF and OUD standardized care pathway for supporting HMF in OENs. Monthly infographics were placed in each nursing unit to reinforce content. Nurses completed pre- and posteducation surveys to evaluate their knowledge and use of the pathway. After the education, rates of OENs receiving human milk at discharge were collected from the electronic health record.

Results: A total of 240 (77.2%) nurses participated in the educational module; awareness of the pathway increased from 91.5% to 97.3%. HMF rate at discharge significantly increased from 29.8% to 59.4% (p = .03).

Conclusion: Improved awareness among nurses of a standardized HMF and OUD care pathway was associated with a doubling of HMF rates at discharge in OENs.