Institutional support for exclusive breastfeeding to hospital employees

Thesis Report.

ABSTRACT: A small scale descriptive study on " Institutional Support for Exclusive Breastfeeding to Hospital Employees" was done to find out the current support for exclusive breastfeeding to hospital employees of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH), Patan Hospital, National Academy for Medical Sciences (Bir Hospital) and Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital (Teku) over the period of four weeks (5th Shrawan to 5th Bhadra, 2062). The purposive sampling technique was adopted and needed information was gathered by using semi-structured interview questionnaires. The sample size was thirty mothers having below one year of age infants and working in hospitals. The obtained data was analyzed by using descriptive statistic and presented in tables. Findings of the revealed that all the mothers were working on full time basis and majority (66.6%) of them were permanent employees and had maternity leave of 2 to 2 1\2 months. Although majority (93%) of mothers and all the nursing directors were positive towards giving exclusive breastfeeding until six months of age of their infants. The majority of mothers had given infant formula milk and other complementary foods due to various reasons. All the institutions were providing some facilities to their working to encourage for exclusive breastfeeding . There were day care centers only in two institutions to keep infants of working mothers during their working hours but the facilities were not adequate. There was provision of lactation breaks to working mothers for breastfeeding butt it wasn't documented in their institutional policy. All the mothers did only day shift works until six months of age of their infants in all the institutions. Therefore, this study concluded that the institutional support provided to the mothers working in the hospitals needed to be increased for exclusive breastfeeding until six months age of their infants.

Eng.