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

Objective: To improve the usage of expressed breast milk invery low birth weight infants admitted in the neonatal intensivecare unit of a tertiary centre in India.Methods: Between April 2015 and August 2016, various Plan-do-act-study cycles were conducted to test change ideas likeantenatal counselling including help of brochure and video, post-natal telephonic reminders within 4-6 hours of birth,standardization of Kangaroo mother care, and non-nutritivesucking protocol. Data was analyzed using statistical processcontrol charts.Results: 156 very low birth weight infants were deliveredduring the study period, of which 31 were excluded due tovarious reasons. Within 6 months of implementation, theproportion of very low birth weight infants who receivedexpressed breast milk within 48 hours improved to 100% from38.7% and this was sustained at 100% for next 8 months. Themean time of availability and volume of expressed breast milkwithin 48 hours, improved gradually from 73.3 h to 20.9 h and 4.7mL to 15.8 mL, respectively. The mean proportion of expressedbreast milk once infant reached a feed volume of 100 mL/kg/dayalso improved from 61.3% to 82.3%.Conclusion: Quality improvement interventions showedpromising results of increased expressed breast milk usage invery low birth weight infants.