Nurse staffing impacts breastfeeding rates, study finds

A study found hospitals adhering to professional nursing staffing guidelines had higher exclusive breast milk feeding rates. Published in Nurse Research, the study of 184 hospitals in 29 states and 2,691 labor nurses found the rates are a nurse-sensitive outcome. “Hospitals should facilitate practices that promote successful human milk feeding, including providing adequate staffing and organizational structures to support nurses’ provisions of high-quality care, including routine skin-to-skin care at birth and assistance with initiating feeding within the first hour of birth,” the authors state.