Shaken Baby Syndrome: A hospital-based education and prevention program in the intermediate care and the newborn intensive care nurseries

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Abstract

Objectives

To educate parents of hospitalized infants on the prevention of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) and to measure their comprehension.

Methods

This study was an educational prevention program on SBS. Parents whose infants were hospitalized participated in the study. Staff nurses educated parents using a script, a video on SBS, written information and roll played with an infant doll. Parents voluntarily sign a commitment statement and are called back at 7 months with a telephone survey.

Results

There were 802 parents who participated with a 20% participation in the telephone follow-up phone call. The large majority of parents remembered the nurse, video, SBS interactive doll and information received. Although there were 39 incidents of SBS in NM during the study, no infant was discharged from one of the participating units (p < 0.05).

Conclusions

Education of parents of prevention of SBS significantly reduces child abuse, even in high risk infants.

Section snippets

Infant crying can trigger SBS

Infant crying is often a trigger that contributes to parental frustration and the act of shaking (Center for Disease Control, 2015, Barr, 2012, Barr, 2006, Meskauskas et al., 2009). However, crying is a normal behavior of infants. Barr et al. (2006) performed a retrospective study on 273 California hospitalized infants diagnosed with SBS which compared the normal crying curve with the incidence of SBS. They assert, “In short, the age-specific incidence curve in hospitalized Shaken Baby Syndrome

Risk factors

Just as inconsolable or frequent crying of an infant has been identified as a trigger for SBS, there are additional risk factors that have been identified for both infants and parents or caregivers. The highest incidence for SBS or AHT occurs in male infants under one year of age (Keenan et al., 2003, King et al., 2003, Laurent-Vannier et al., 2009, Barr, 2006, Kesler et al., 2008, Tursz and Cook, 2014).

Multiple births (Keenan et al., 2003) and prematurity (Tursz and Cook, 2014, Hoffman, 2005)

Parental education can prevent SBS

Providing hospital-based education to parents is effective in improving parental knowledge about SBS (Simmonnet et al., 2014). A study of 266 parents of newborns who received a short educational session about infant crying and SBS, a pamphlet, and a pre-intervention questionnaire demonstrated that 27% of mothers and 36% of fathers had never heard of SBS (Simmonnet et al., 2014). At 6 weeks 68% of the 183 participants improved their knowledge about SBS (Simmonnet et al., 2014). Additionally, a

Goals

Goals of the SBS parental education program included: (1) to provide educational materials about SBS to the parents of newborn infants, (2) to assess parents' comprehension of the educational materials and the dangers of violent infant shaking, (3) to track the impact of the program through the collection of returned commitment statements, and (4) to evaluate the program's effect on the incidence of SBS at UNMH.

Specific aims

The aims of this program were twofold: (1) to measure parents' participation in the

Impact on SBS incidence

From January 2012 to September 2014 there were 39 incidences of diagnosed SBS in New Mexican infants who were discharged from units other than the ICN and NICU at UNMH. During the same time period, there were 0 infants discharged from ICN and NICU that were subsequently diagnosed with SBS (p < 0.05).

Socio-demographics

Eight-hundred and two parents from the UNMH ICN and NICU participated in the program. One hundred sixty-one parents (approximately 20%) completed the 7 month follow-up telephone survey. Infants

Discussion

Our results indicate that parents' baseline knowledge about SBS and normal infant crying is inadequate in New Mexico. The SBS program at UNMH demonstrates that parents' knowledge can be improved by a very short educational intervention. Education by nurses using a simple written pamphlet, visualization of the damage from shaking an infant with a simulation doll, and parents viewing a video about SBS, can increase parents' knowledge about SBS. The findings revealed that almost all participants

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

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