[Reducing the Incidence of Feeding Intolerance in Premature Infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit]

Nutrition is very important for premature infants. Our recent research showed that the accuracy of recognition related to tube feeding was 74.8%, and the completeness of tube feeding was 74.3%. After analyzing this situation, the reasons found to be significantly associated with the low rates of tube-feeding recognition accuracy and completion included: inconsistent treatment of gastric residual by nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), lack of sufficient assessment tools in the NICU, out-of-date specialist care guidelines, and lack of a regular inspection system.

Our aim was to improve tube-feeding-related recognition accuracy and completion to reduce the incidence of feeding intolerance.

The intervention included developing a guideline manual for feeding procedures and making a gastric residual color card as a clinical-care reference. Holding on-the-job training and monitoring the quality of nursing care can reduce the incidence of feeding intolerance in preterm.

The accuracy of tube-feeding recognition increased from 74.8% to 93.7%. The completion of tube feeding increased from 74.3% to 95.5%. The incidence of feeding intolerance in premature infants decreased from 71.8% to 39.0%.

The results and process of this project provides a reference for improving the clinical care model for preterm infants in the NICU and for improving the enteral nutrition of preterm infants. The implementation of this project may improve the quality of nursing care and enable preterm infants to receive safer and more-complete care.