Improving Early Colostrum Feeding in a Tertiary Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: A Quality Improvement Initiative

Colostrum feeding is known for its immune benefits for reduction in nosocomial sepsis, necrotizing enterocolitis, and ventilator-associated pneumonias. Colostrum feeding also helps in improving breastfeeding rates and early discharge of vulnerable neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) babies. The objective of this study was to improve early colostrum feeding/oropharyngeal colostrum administration in a busy tertiary NICU in India. Multiple plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles were conducted from January 2020 to September 2020 to improve early colostrum feeding rates in NICU babies to >60%. We tested change ideas such as training of health care personnel, counseling of mothers and families about importance of colostrum expression and feeding, bedside collection of colostrum, safe transportation of colostrum to the NICU, and electronic data handling. Sustainability of the interventions was studied from October 2020 to March 2021 and data were analyzed. Early colostrum feeding rates improved from a baseline of 4.36-68.21% after six PDSA cycles through 9 months. After counseling of mothers and families of NICU babies, rates of breastfeeding and colostrum feeding improved to 98.8% and 97.11%, respectively. The early breast stimulation and colostrum expression rates also improved to 87.28% and 68.2%, respectively. Early colostrum feeding rate was 87.5% after 6 months through the sustainability phase. Quality improvement interventions significantly improved the rate of early colostrum feeding in sick babies admitted to a busy NICU, and the improvement was sustained for 6 months.