Caring for Babies: A Study of Ontario Maternal-Newborn Hospitals on the Implementation of Parent-targeted Education

Newborn infants have blood work procedures for newborn screening and bilirubin testing in their first days of life that cause pain, distress and physiological changes. Breastfeeding (BF), skin to skin care (SSC), or giving small amounts of sweet solutions (sucrose or glucose) with or without a pacifier, effectively and safely reduce pain and distress in newborn infants during painful procedures. However, studies of neonatal pain management practices in Ontario and throughout Canada demonstrate inconsistent use of these strategies. There is a clear need for developing and testing acceptable parent-targeted interventions, alongside health care provider (HCP)-targeted knowledge translation (KT) interventions, to support parents' involvement in comforting their infants during painful procedures. To address this knowledge to action (KTA) gap, Denise Harrison's Be Sweet to Babies team developed the BSweet2Babies video, which demonstrates the effectiveness of BF, SSC, and sucrose during infant bloodwork and how parents can use and advocate for these pain management strategies. This project addresses a knowledge to practice gap that is highly relevant to all babies and their families. Thus, this study has the potential to advance health care of all babies and contribute to the science of KT by evaluating the implementation of a parent-targeted and mediated KT strategy in diverse hospital settings. Hospitals were eligible for inclusion if they (1) provide Level 1 or Level 2 maternal/newborn care contributing data to the Better Outcomes Registry \& Network Ontario (BORN) Information Systems (BIS); (2) have a birth volume of at least 50 per year; (3) have \<85% use of pain management (BF,SSC, sucrose) during newborn screening or bilirubin sampling, as per BIS data; and (4) have \< 50% missing data for the pain management data element in the BIS. Participating hospitals will receive a tablet and will offer all parents the 5 minute BSweet2Babies video before newborn bloodwork. BORN Information System (BIS) data will subsequently be analyzed to evaluate the use of BF, SSC and sweet solutions.