Enhancing student public health nurses’ breastfeeding support competency: A Pilot initiative

Abstract

Breastfeeding is best for the health and well-being of mothers and babies and is recommended to continue for up to two years. The overwhelming evidence demonstrates its important contribution to public health in both developed and under developed countries and yet rates remain lower than the accepted norm. The determinants of breastfeeding are multifactorial and thus require varying supportive measures at many levels. Education is often perceived to be the key to success, however, applying breastfeeding education to practice for health care practitioners is complex, challenging and not easily translated. A competency framework which was developed to assess breastfeeding support was applied to a clinical educational package for student public health nurses (PHN). This paper describes how this pilot initiative was developed, achieved and evaluated. The competency package was used during clinical practice placements, over an 8-month period, to capture indicators of breastfeeding support achieved at both awareness and generalist levels. Evidence of assessing breastfeeding in practice supported by preceptor public health nurses or midwives was also recorded. Preliminary results indicate that student PHNs positively evaluated this initiative. The ease of application of this intervention warrants further examination with a larger more diverse cohort of HCPs and inclusion of breastfeeding outcome measures beyond the educators.