Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Recommendations and Safe Sleep Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This paper conducts a systematic literature review on nurses’ knowledge, attitudes and practice regarding safe infant sleep practices. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework was used to guide the review of literature. Eighteen articles were evaluated for inclusion criteria and results indicated that nurses’ lack sufficient knowledge and have conflicting attitudes towards infant sleep recommendations, as well as practice safe sleep recommendations inconsistently. In addition, it was found that nurses value policy when it comes to implementing safe sleep practices. A detailed discussion of how knowledge deficits, attitudinal barriers, and education and policy effect nursing practice and patient care provides supporting evidence for proposed interventions to change nursing behavior and practice. Proposed interventions include developing nurse education supported by research findings and rational, a new wide reaching public education campaign and policy development within organizations to support the use to current safe sleep recommendations.