>Could anyone who works with bf moms via helplines or phone follow-ups share
ideas on your method of documentation? I am struggling with this right now
and not sure which route to go narrative, standardized form, checklist etc.
Input would be appreciated. Thanks, Sue<

Sue, surely your method of documentation depends on what you want out of the
records you keep.  In our organisation we have a simple grid for calls
received in a month -- tick the issue that each woman calls with, with a box
for 'other'.  Then at the bottom are tallyboxes for number of calls made to
parents, to health professionals, to other BfN members, etc.  Every fifth
caller is asked questions so that we can monitor the profile of the people
we reach -- we worked out what we would like to know and then devised the
questions.  The form goes to all our Breastfeeding Supporters, who are
encouraged to return it every month so we can keep rolling stats for the
organisation.

If you want to see what kinds of info we asked for and how it can be used
there is an article in the British Journal of Midwifery, May 1999 by
Broadfoot, Britten and Sachs on the initial results of our telephone
helpline, based very much on the stats collected in this way.

Personally I also collect phrases or words women use.  For example, when
writing a leaflet about thrush and breastfeeding it was really useful to
have a collection of the graphic ways women use to describe the
sensations -- see MIDIRS Dec 1998 on Breastfeeding and Thrush, Jones and
Sachs to see how this contributed to our work on getting thrush in bf
recognised.

So -- decide what you want out and then think how to gather this in the best
way, I'd suggest.

Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN, UK

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html