Barriers to breastfeeding: a qualitative study of the views of health professionals and lay counsellors.

Tennant, R.; Wallace, L.M. and Law, S. (2006). Barriers to breastfeeding: a qualitative study of the views of health professionals and lay counsellors. Community Practitioner, 79(5) pp. 152–156.

Abstract

Increasing breastfeeding initiation rates is now a target for the NHS. The attitudes and beliefs of health professionals are known to influence mothers' decisions to breastfeed. This paper describes a small qualitative study of health visitors' (n = 7), midwives' (n = 3) and lay breastfeeding counsellors' (n = 2) views of obstacles to breastfeeding. Interviews showed that day-to-day practice is informed by training and personal experience with research evidence having a more limited influence. Health professionals may experience tensions between these influences on their practice. Practical problems in accessing training make it difficult for health professionals to stay up-to-date with new evidence. Information from the study was used to develop a self-study training workbook for local health professionals.

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About

  • Item ORO ID
  • 46610
  • Item Type
  • Journal Item
  • ISSN
  • 1462-2815
  • Keywords
  • attitude of health personnel; breast feeding; community health nursing; counseling; decision making; female; Great Britain; humans; midwifery; nurse-patient relations; nursing staff; nursing education; social support
  • Academic Unit or School
  • Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
  • Depositing User
  • Louise Wallace
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

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