Overcoming Obstacles to Become a Baby Friendly Hospital
Title: Overcoming Obstacles to Become a Baby Friendly Hospital
- Describe the steps taken toward implementing Baby Friendly Practices
- Identify obstacles and strategies used to overcome them
- Demonstrate that implementing Baby Friendly practices increases customer satisfaction and compliance with core measures.
Achieving Baby Friendly Designation is supported by: Healthy People 2020 objective to increase exclusive breastfeeding of mothers during the early postpartum period, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation from Feb., 2012, that mothers exclusively breastfeed for the first 6 months and the Joint Commission perinatal core measure for exclusive breast feeding while in the hospital
Proposed change:
Implement Baby Friendly Initiatives and continue to revise practices to meet updated guidelines to maintain Baby Friendly Designation.
Implementation, outcomes and evaluation:
Baby-Friendly components can be met with resistance from staff and physicians. Baby Friendly requires that staff reverse ideas such as sending infants to the nursery so that mothers can sleep, offering supplementation of formula until lactation is established, using pacifiers to satisfy suckling, and keeping mothers and healthy babies apart during medical procedures. Becoming Baby Friendly often demands a change in practice toward family-centered care. The program teaches breastfeeding skills to mothers, supports skin-to-skin contact after birth, promotes rooming in as standard of care for healthy infants and offers breastfeeding resources upon discharge.
Myths and obstacles of Baby Friendly Practice can present obstacles to implementation. Most common myth is that mothers will not have a choice in how to feed their baby, cost to the hospital will rise significantly and the requirement of staff education is difficult to meet. Obstacles to meeting the Baby Friendly goals include supplying consistent information to parents and staff regarding breastfeeding; keeping moms and babies together with rooming in as standard of care; and changing practice to meet skin-to-skin requirements.
Customer satisfaction measured before and after implementation of Baby Friendly practices to the question “I learned how to feed my baby properly” demonstrated a significant increase. This same result is reflected in the perinatal CORE measure of exclusive breastfeeding.
Implications for nursing practice: Many changes to current practice were implemented to meet the Baby Friendly Initiative Guidelines. While these were initially perceived as obstacles, they are now part of every day practice and have not only increased patient satisfaction, but nursing satisfaction as well.
Keywords: Baby Friendly Initiatives, Obstacles, Education, Customer Satisfaction.