Trends of breastfeeding among health care providers in a tertiary care hospital

Objective: to evaluate the knowledge and practice of breastfeeding among health care providers (hcp). design and setting: this descriptive cross sectional study was conducted in june 2014 at “abha maternity and children hospital” abha,southwestern,saudi arabia. methodology: a questionnaire was used to collect data regarding breastfeeding of 88 female hcp who were married and saudi. the data were analyzed by spss version 16. results: study population included 88 hcp,52 (59.1%) staff nurses,24 (27.3%) midwives and 12 (13.6%) doctors with mean age of 35 ± 10.1 years. twenty eight (31.82%) participants had no kids. mothers’ mean age was 39.1 ± 21.4years and at first delivery 26.7 ± 3.5 years. of 60 mothers,16 (26.7%) had one and 22 (36.7%) each were having two and three children. total 100/126 (79.4%) babies were breastfed for mean duration of 7.1 ± 6.9 months (11.9 ± 5.8 months by 93% doctors and 5.3 ± 6.3 months by 75% paramedics p <0.001). our 50/60 (83.3%) mothers breastfed,25.4% for three months,22.2% for four months,19.1% for six months,11.1% for one year and 3.2% for two years. older (>30 years) mothers breastfed for longer duration compared to younger (≤30 years) (9 versus 7.1 months,p <0.001). mostly mothers,who didn’t lactate first kid,also avoided for subsequent babies. only 18/88 (20.5%) participants were intended to lactate next baby. conclusion: among hcp,doctors’ knowledge and practice of breast feeding was significantly better than paramedics. there were some flaws in concepts about management of problems of lactating mothers. improvement of hcp’s knowledge by courses/workshops is imperative to promote breastfeeding. © 2017,pakistan pediatric journal. all rights reserved.