Hospitals are encouraged to improve evidence-based practices with various initiatives such as The Joint Commission Perinatal Core Measures and Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative both recognizing the protection and value of breast milk. The Breastfeeding Care Management Team is a strategy used by lactation consultants to partner with the nursing staff when implementing best breastfeeding care practices in our large health care system.  Within the Women and Children’s units, each shift faces different breastfeeding support challenges.  What better way to identify these needs than to have nurse champions from each shift, representing each unit serving to educate, advocate and celebrate on behalf of families and staff?

Proposed change:

The Breastfeeding Care Management Team, The Crew, uses quality initiatives throughout the Women and Children’s Service line to initiate and support breastfeeding related issues. This core group works together with the Lactation Department in the following ways:

Gears our facility towards becoming a Baby Friendly Hospital;

Supports the goals in the Texas 10 Step Program;

Leads the Women and Children’s departments in World Breastfeeding Awareness Week;

 Starts mom’s pumping for expressed breast milk within 6 hours of baby’s birth as indicated;

Assists mom’s in breastfeeding their babies; and,

Identifies and find solutions related to concerns from parents and/or staff.

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation:

The Crew Team ‘Boot Camp Training’ consisted of the learners completing 5 modules geared toward assisting mom and baby with breastfeeding support.   At the beginning of class, a pre-evaluation and pre-questionnaire were completed by attendees.   This was repeated a month later to reflect the improvement of skills and knowledge in this core group of nurses. 

Implications for nursing practice:

The Breastfeeding Care Management Team is an innovated tactic to partner the lactation team with the nursing team in supporting and protecting breastfeeding within a large hospital.  Breast milk and breastfeeding are known to provide many benefits to both mom and baby. Hospitals can use this plan by implementing a Breastfeeding Care Management Team to support families and staff.

Keywords:

Breastfeeding, Team, quality initiatives, collaborative, education, nurses, lactation consultant