Nursing education and institutional policy reform: creating a trajectory towards successful lactation

In the United States, nearly all women choose to give birth in a hospital and a large majority of women intend to nourish their baby with breast milk. Thus, healthcare professionals are a vital factor in supporting, educating, and caring for new mothers as they learn to breastfeed their baby. Unfortunately, many women give up on their goal to initiate breastfeeding or cease breastfeeding sooner than they intended. Current research and literature inform healthcare professionals of care practices and institutional policies that create barriers to successful breastfeeding. Using Dr. Jean Watson\u27s Theory of Human Caring (Watson, 2002) as a theoretical framework and Developmental Evaluation (Patton, 2011) as a guide to the process of change, this project works to remove practice and policy barriers within the Family Birth Center at a large Midwestern hospital. Through education and policy reform, this project helps create a trajectory towards successful lactation for newly breastfeeding mothers