A quality improvement project to decrease screen use in children aged 0-5 via a parental education program

Critical brain development occurs between the ages of zero and five (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2016). The digitalization of childhood impacts how children experience play, learn, and build relationships (Hutton et al., 2020). The purpose of this QI project was to increase provider use of the “Family Media Plan’” and determine if a parent education would decrease screen-time. This QI project sought to answer the question, will the use of screen-time education, increase provider use of the “Family Media Plan,” increase parent knowledge and decrease screen-time, in children under five years? This QI initiative was reviewed by the Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi Institutional Review Board (IRB) for project/study and approval to proceed was received. The setting for this QI project was a primary care clinic. Participants were a recruited from patients under five, that presented for well visit. Pre-test, post-test design was selected to evaluate efficacy of the intervention. A modified version of the HomeSTEAD survey was selected to measure behavior change. Eight families completed the initial survey and received the educational intervention. A mean of 115.714 minutes was calculated to the question “on average, how much time does the child spend on screened devices per day?” Seven (n-7) families responded to the follow-up telephone interview. A mean of 102.857 minutes was calculated, demonstrating a 12.858-minute decrease and resulting in an 11% decrease from the pre-intervention response. A simple chart review was conducted to identify use of the “Family Media Plan.” Seven of the seven participant EHR had a complete “Family Media Plan.” This study only addressed the amount of time spent with screened media devices and did not differentiate between educational and non- educational programming, nor did it address the varying impact of screen-time versus indoor/outdoor play.