Friday, February 4, 2011

Breastfeeding friendly?

I know it has been forever since I looked at this blog let alone post on it but it occurred to me that it was way overdue. I recently got a promotion at the hospital with my newly acquired MPH degree. I am now the Nutrition Support Expanded Role RN on the Children's Surgical Unit. Which really means nothing to you, but as part of this position I have been placed on the breast milk task force for the hospital. (MaryAnne and Ashley be proud.) This task force was created due to some problems IHC wide in the handling and storage of breast milk. Due to the illness of some of our babies their moms have to pump their breastmilk. It is then feed to the baby through a tube that goes from their nose to their stomach. So we freeze and store extra milk and even increase the amount of calories in the moms breast milk. So we are basically swimming in breastmilk and not following the rules set up to protect the milk. Breast milk was even fed to the wrong baby in an IHC facility! (Thankfully it was not a Primary Children's.) Anyway I have now been charged to set up a group of nurses who will serve as the Lactation Support team for the surgical unit. They will be in charge of helping and supporting breastfeeding moms evaluating latch scores if the babies are breastfeeding and auditing nurses to make sure they know the proper procedures that come with handling/storing breast milk. Sadly out of 100+ nurses on the surgical unit only 5 have responded that they are willing to complete the training necessary to be part of the Lactation Support group. What happened to breastfeeding friendly nurses? It appears I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck!

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