Addressing Screen Time Guidance through an Evidence-Based Educational Presentation in Pediatrics

Abstract

Purpose. This quality improvement (QI) project assessed the efficacy of an evidence-based 25-minute webinar on advanced practitioners’ knowledge of 2016 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) screen time guidelines. This evidence-based QI project was conducted at Chiricahua Community Health Centers, Inc. (CCHCI). Background. Excessive pediatric screen time is associated with reduced sleep, increased obesity, and developmental delays (Carter et al., 2016). Although the AAP states media use should be assessed annually at well-child visits, only 16% of pediatricians implement guidance about media use and screen time in their practice (Reid et al., 2016). Methods. This QI project used a quantitative, single-group, pretest/posttest and 3-week follow-up design to assess pediatric primary care providers' knowledge of the 2016 AAP screen time guidelines before, immediately after, and three weeks after introduction of the educational webinar. Data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and paired t-testing for the total of eight (n=8) participants from CCHCI who completed the pretest, webinar presentation, the immediate posttest and the 3-week follow-up. Results. The overall results revealed that participants’ (n=8) knowledge significantly improved after the evidence-based educational intervention with a mean score of 45% on the pre-intervention survey, 92% on post-intervention survey 1, and 86% on post-intervention survey 2. Conclusions. The results of this project show that the pediatric primary care providers at CCHCI who completed the webinar had significant improvement in knowledge after evidence-based education was introduced, as evidenced by p<0.001. Additionally, although the post-survey scores at 3 weeks decreased, they were still significantly higher than the pre-intervention survey scores.