6887 An audit and survey of vitamin D on postnatal ward

Objectives Aims Have pregnant women been offered vitamin D supplementation as recommended by NICE guidelines To find out if parents have decided to give their babies vitamin D supplementation as recommended by NICE guidelines To find out if pregnant women are on vitamin D supplements and if they were already on it prior to pregnancy. Methods This study aimed to collect data from pregnant women who delivered at SGH and were on the postnatal ward. Data was collected from 53 pregnant women with the support of neonatal staff working on the postnatal ward. We asked the sample patients to fill in a questionnaire which was then put into a spreadsheet format. Some key parameters recorded: Did they take Vitamin D supplements before? – Were they given information on Vitamin D Did they choose to take vitamin D after the information? Are they going to carry on taking vitamin D after Pregnancy? Are they planning to give vitamin D to their babies? Are they going to be exclusively breastfeeding or be using formula milk? Their ethnicity – Would they want more information regarding vitamin D? Results This audit aimed to find out if pregnant women were on vitamin D supplements and if they were offered Vitamin D as per NICE guidelines. (4) Results from our survey showed that 66% of the mothers were already on vitamin D supplements before their pregnancy. However, 34% were not and 12/18 women not taking it were white. According to figure 1, 25% of the women were not offered vitamin D, this is a significant amount and is not up to the standard of the NICE guideline, which recommends to increase accessibility of vitamin D supplements to pregnant and breastfeeding women. (4) figure 1 looked at what type of milk mothers were going to give their babies and if they were considering giving vitamin D supplements or not to their babies. 41 out of 49 mothers said they were exclusively going to breast feed and of the 41 mothers, 14 (34%) said they won't give vitamin D supplements to their babies. This could be because information stating that breastmilk doesn't have adequate amounts of vitamin D and they should give vitamin D supplements may have not been given to mothers. Limitations and Further Conclusion This audit concluded that recommendations by NICE guidelines on vitamin D accessibility was only partly met and there was still place for improvement. Also, 34% of mothers who are going to exclusively breast feed, are not going to give their babies vitamin D supplements. Therefore, I think an intervention such as leaflets should be implemented and then this service should be re-audited. References Zhang R, Naughton DP. Vitamin D in health and disease: Current perspectives. Nutrition Journal. Wang H, Chen W, Li D, Yin X, Zhang X, Olsen N, et al. Vitamin D and chronic diseases. Aging and disease. Martineau AR, Jolliffe DA, Greenberg L, Aloia JF, Bergman P, Dubnov-Raz G, et al. Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory infections: individual participant data meta-analysis. Health Technology Assessment.