Safe Sleep Star Overview

Safe Sleep Star Outpatient Toolkit

Safe Sleep Star 

The KIDS Network, supported by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, awards recognition to outpatient provider clinics that demonstrate a commitment to reducing sleep-related infant deaths by promoting safe sleep practices and risk-reduction strategies. By earning a Safe Sleep Star, a clinic demonstrates its leadership and commitment to eliminating sleep-related deaths.

Designed to improve the consistency in safe-sleep communication between infant caregivers and providers. The focus is to provide a Safe Sleep Toolkit for providers to facilitate a consistent safe sleep message (position, location, and environment) to caregivers of infants. The Safe Sleep Star Toolkit is intended for use by pediatricians, family medicine physicians, and obstetricians. The focal point of the toolkit is a checklist for caregivers to complete regarding safe sleep. Caregivers are asked to respond to the following:

  1. How do you lay your baby down to sleep?
  2. Where does your baby sleep at home?
  3. Please circle the items that are already in your baby’s sleeping area at home, or that you plan to get for your baby’s sleeping area.
  4. Have you talked about safe sleep with others who may put your child down to sleep?

The Safe Sleep Star includes an advanced level for clinics who choose to engage in a quality improvement process to reach Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Part 4 using Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) cycles. The PDSA cycle helps the clinic identify interventions to improve safe sleep promotion and education within their office setting.
 
Below are the steps to accomplish the advanced level via the Safe Sleep Star:
 
  1. KIDS Network Safe Sleep Instructor (SSI) partners with an OB/Peds/FM clinic(s) 
  2. SSI provides Safe Sleep Star overview to clinic staff
  3. SSI submits a Safe Sleep Star letter of intent to KIDS Network
  4. SSI connects the clinic with KIDS Network Quality Improvement team to proceed with the following:
    • Month 1
      • Safe Sleep Star QI Webinar #1 (Introduction, Overview of Project, Safe Sleep Interventions) 
      • Clinic collects and enters baseline data
      • KIDS Network Quality Improvement team and provide analyze data and identify gaps for improvement
    • Month 2-3
      • Clinic launches data cycle: develop/implement improvement plan
      • Clinic collects and enters data
      • Safe Sleep Star QI Webinar #2 (Project Wrap‐up: review results, success stories, barriers, etc.) 
    • Wrap Up
      • Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Part 4 attestation and credit
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Safe Sleep Star Outpatient Toolkit Includes: Contact Christy Schunn at: edirector@kidsks.org for more information about the Safe Sleep Star Outpatient Toolkit.