Jennifer Riley

While pasteurized donor human milk (PDHM) has well-known benefits for infants in the newborn ICU setting, Jennifer Riley, MSN, RN, IBCLC, sought to understand its impact on healthy infants as an alternative to formula.

She developed a research proposal, received a $2,500 Karsh Enrichment Grant and collaborated with the Pediatric Newborn Medicine Department.

After data collection and analysis, the team found:

• No difference in breastfeeding outcomes between parents who chose PDHM and those who chose infant formula for medical supplementation.
• Differences in maternal education, body mass index and breastfeeding intent between feeding groups.
• That mothers in both groups demonstrated comparable levels of breastfeeding self-efficacy and lower breastfeeding self-efficacy scores at one month postpartum.

In April 2021, the study was published in Breastfeeding Medicine.

Other staff who participated included: Mandy Belfort, MD, MPH; Sarbattama Sen, MD; Kaitlin Drouin, MA, MS; and Sara Cherkerzian, SM, ScD

Why It’s Magnet: Magnet designation requires an example of how clinical nurses disseminated the organization’s completed nursing research study to external audiences as part of the New Knowledge, Improvements and Innovations component (NK2b) of the Magnet model. This is one of many examples demonstrating how nurses are contributing to the body of evidence surrounding patient care and nursing practice.

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