Educating Pediatric and Family Nurse Practitioner Students on Breastfeeding and Lactation

Abstract

Background: While breastfeeding rates are nationally on the rise, they are not meeting the Healthy People 2020 goals. To encourage and support meeting these goals and to increase breastfeeding benefits from the mother and infants, education of primary care providers can be a vital resource for the community. Purpose: This DNP project aimed to deliver an evidence-based online PowerPoint presentation to a group of family and pediatric nurse practitioner students. They were assessed prior to the presentation and after the presentation to determine if their knowledge had increased so that they were more comfortable supporting mothers. The purpose was to assess if this was an effective method of distributing breastfeeding and lactation information. Methods: This DNP project used a pretest and posttest design to determine if there was an increase in the participants scores after the educational online recorded PowerPoint presentation was administered. The presentation, pretest, and posttest were sent to current family and pediatric nurse practitioner students at the University of Arizona. The presentation was sent to the participants via e-mail. Once data collection was complete, descriptive statistics were utilized in the analysis of the information. Results: Eight participants completed both the pretest and posttest. The average score on the pretest was 68.57% and the average score on the posttest was 75%. Discussion: This DNP project showed a minimal increase in the knowledge of participating students after completion of the evidence-based education as evidenced by the approximately 6% increase in the posttest scores. Although there was an increase in posttest scores, it was not shown to be statistically significant. DNP project was a first step in developing an evidence-based education on breastfeeding and lactation for nurse practitioner students about breastfeeding and lactation.