Tricia,
I want to congratulate you on your very informative, detailed and well
argued email. It gives those planning staff education good points to ponder,
for the benefit of all - individual staff members and, ultimately, the
mother and babies. How people use learning packages would be pretty typical,
when the goal is more on getting a pass grade than on the process.
Virginia
in Brisbane, QLD, Australia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tricia Shamblin wrote;
> Dear Barbara,
> It's wonderful to hear that your hospital is considering training it's
> staff. I think that all of us that work with breastfeeding mothers realize
> that education is the key to meaningful change. I'm an IBCLC at a hospital
> and recently we have begun a staff training program in an attempt to
> become baby friendly. I have to say that the more that I have researched
> this, the more that I'm convinced that the training must be an in-house
> training program to realize any meaningful change. IMHO, online programs
> just do not work. There is no way to learn how to help a women breastfeed
> by watching an online program, they are a waste of time and money, even if
> you have a motivated staff which you generally don't. You wouldn't want to
> go to a doctor that went to medical school online, right? We are a small,
> community hospital, near a very large hospital with a lot of money. They
> started this process before us, but they are used an online program for
> their nurses.
> Some of our nurses work at both hospitals. After they completed their
> online training at the other hospital, I asked these nurses a few basic
> questions and they were not able to answer any of them. Whats more, I
> could tell that it didn't work because it didn't change any of their
> practices. These nurses are the ones on the unit that were still heavily
> pushing formula at every opportunity even after there online training. It
> is really hard to get people in for training, but it can be done! I really
> pushed for it, we have to do it or things will never change. I've asked
> these nurses about their online training and every one of them has
> admitted that they didn't read any of the information in these programs,
> they just clicked through the pages as fast as possible and guessed on the
> answers until they passed the test. Baby Friendly stresses that training
> must be to the point of competency. This one of the reasons we have
> decided not to accept any outside
> training, but all of our nurses must have our in-house training. I'm sorry
> if I've offended by saying so, but I don't think that online programs
> create nurses that are competent in helping mothers breastfeed. I can't
> tell you the amount of complaining that went on when we announced that all
> the nurses were coming in for mandatory 20 hours of training. I can tell
> you that I was not very popular! But it has been such a wonderful
> experience. Our nurses are becoming excited about helping mother's
> breastfeed, they are beginning to understand the importance of human milk
> for babies and maybe we should pause and offer education before just
> handing over the bottle of formula. And the counseling skills are so
> important! And the group discussions are invaluable. There is just no way
> to replicate that with an online program. These nurses were so angry at me
> at first, but I will tell you that at least 80% of them have come up to me
> at some point and told me how
> much they are enjoying the classes and how much it is helping them with
> their patients. They are looking forward to more training and excited
> about the changes they see for their patients. I highly recommend getting
> your staff in for an in-house training program.
***********************************************
Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome
|