Impact of Quality Improvement Program on Expressed Breastmilk Usage in Very Low Birth Weight Infants

To improve the usage of expressed breast milk in very low birth weight infants admitted in the neonatal intensive care unit of a tertiary centre in India.

Between April 2015 and August 2016, various Plan-do-act-study cycles were conducted to test change ideas like antenatal counselling including help of brochure and video, post-natal telephonic reminders within 4-6 hours of birth, standardization of Kangaroo mother care, and non-nutritive sucking protocol. Data was analyzed using statistical process control charts.

156 very low birth weight infants were delivered during the study period, of which 31 were excluded due to various reasons. Within 6 months of implementation, the proportion of very low birth weight infants who received expressed breast milk within 48 hours improved to 100% from 38.7% and this was sustained at 100% for next 8 months. The mean time of availability and volume of expressed breast milk within 48 hours, improved gradually from 73.3 h to 20.9 h and 4.7 mL to 15.8 mL, respectively. The mean proportion of expressed breast milk once infant reached a feed volume of 100 mL/kg/day also improved from 61.3% to 82.3%.

Quality improvement interventions showed promising results of increased expressed breast milk usage in very low birth weight infants.