Nurse involvement key to upping hospital breastfeeding rates

In 2016, about 30% of the more than 14,000 women who gave birth at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies, a Magnet hospital in Orlando, Fla., breastfed their babies exclusively at the time of discharge. By 2019, that number was 57%. The hospital credits frontline nurses, who all learned how to help mothers succeed at breastfeeding and helped implement the effort to increase breastfeeding rates. “We gave [nurses] the opportunity to help make the workflow work best for them, at the same time teaching them that this was what was best for their patients,” said Cynthia Tinder, MSN, RN, program manager for nursing and special projects. Nurse leaders there attribute the initiative’s success to the decision to engage frontline nurses in designing the workflows associated with the project. (Nurse.com story, 1/10/20)