I have been interested in this topic for quite a long time as an educator of undergraduate Nursing students.  I'm sure you are well aware of some of my students interest and involvement with this list..your support is much appreciated!

I know that my students get consistent, progressive breastfeeding education throughout their entire curriculum, provided by two faculty who are both IBCLC's.  I also had the opportunity to evaluate the impact of this education on students beliefs, attitudes and intention to support breastfeeding during their education.  I am working with an undergraduate student who came up with the idea, as well as Dr. Susan Henly from the University of Minnesota who has a long history of breastfeeding research.

We studied students in one class from the time they were sophomores (with no breastfeeding formal education ) through their senior year.  We sampled them once per semester and measured the impact of their education.  I am presently preparing for the last sample to be obtained, so I do not have final results as yet, but the results to date are primarily as I'd expected.  They begin the program with attitudes, beliefs and knowledge similar to that of the general university student population (studied and published earlier).  Their attitudes, beliefs and knowledge improved with every sampling to date, but their intention to support breastfeeding declined in the second sample after getting their first didactic and clinical knowledge.  My personal feeling is that once they learned about breastfeeding, they felt ill prepared (novices) to support breastfeeding adequately.  This intention measure improved with the next sampling after more classroom/clinical and I'm waiting to see how the next round goes.

Needless to say, this is exciting work for me since it has such direct impact on what I do.  It also supports the inclusion of this content in the Nursing curriculum and has implications across health professions in general.

I will be presenting the preliminary findings on Nov 9 in San Diego (with my student) at the Sigma Theta Tau International Biennial Convention and am excited to share these encouraging, though small, results!

I hope to publish the final report and will let you know if we get any takers!

Cindy Anderson, MS, WHNP, IBCLC
University of North Dakota

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