Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding

Objective: to explore women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding from formal support networks, specifically health professionals involved in postnatal support. Design, setting and participants: a qualitative exploratory design was employed using the critical incident techni...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hauck, Yvonne, Graham-Smith, C., McInerney, J., Kay, S.
Format: Journal Article
Published: ELSEVIER SCI LTD 2011
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21543
_version_ 1848750618771980288
author Hauck, Yvonne
Graham-Smith, C.
McInerney, J.
Kay, S.
author_facet Hauck, Yvonne
Graham-Smith, C.
McInerney, J.
Kay, S.
author_sort Hauck, Yvonne
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Objective: to explore women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding from formal support networks, specifically health professionals involved in postnatal support. Design, setting and participants: a qualitative exploratory design was employed using the critical incident technique. Data were obtained from 62 Western Australian women who responded to an invitation to share incidents of receiving conflicting advice. Women who had breast fed a child within the past 12 months shared their experience through a telephone interview (n=50) or completing a brief questionnaire (n=12) addressing the following questions: Describe a situation in detail where you felt you received conflicting advice about breast feeding from a health professional. How did this situation affect you and/or your breast feeding? Findings: a modified constant comparison method was used to analyse the critical incidents revealing commonalities under who offered conflicting advice; what contributed to advice being perceived as conflicting; topic areas more inclined to being regarded as conflicting; what protected against advice being perceived as conflicting; the consequences of receiving conflicting advice; and strategies that women used to manage these incidents. Key conclusions and implications for practice: advice that was viewed as conflicting extended beyond the provision of information that was inconsistent or directly contradictory, and included issues around information overload and disparities between the mother's and health professional's expectations. The manner of presenting information or advice, the skills of using effective communication, demonstration of a caring attitude with an empathic approach and focusing upon the woman as an individual were seen to be important to minimise these incidents. Attention to women's perceptions and the consequences of conflicting advice must be addressed, otherwise the credibility and confidence in health professionals' knowledge and ability to support breast feeding is questioned, resulting in a valuable support network being selectively ignored. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T07:39:42Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-21543
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T07:39:42Z
publishDate 2011
publisher ELSEVIER SCI LTD
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-215432017-09-13T13:53:06Z Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding Hauck, Yvonne Graham-Smith, C. McInerney, J. Kay, S. Objective: to explore women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding from formal support networks, specifically health professionals involved in postnatal support. Design, setting and participants: a qualitative exploratory design was employed using the critical incident technique. Data were obtained from 62 Western Australian women who responded to an invitation to share incidents of receiving conflicting advice. Women who had breast fed a child within the past 12 months shared their experience through a telephone interview (n=50) or completing a brief questionnaire (n=12) addressing the following questions: Describe a situation in detail where you felt you received conflicting advice about breast feeding from a health professional. How did this situation affect you and/or your breast feeding? Findings: a modified constant comparison method was used to analyse the critical incidents revealing commonalities under who offered conflicting advice; what contributed to advice being perceived as conflicting; topic areas more inclined to being regarded as conflicting; what protected against advice being perceived as conflicting; the consequences of receiving conflicting advice; and strategies that women used to manage these incidents. Key conclusions and implications for practice: advice that was viewed as conflicting extended beyond the provision of information that was inconsistent or directly contradictory, and included issues around information overload and disparities between the mother's and health professional's expectations. The manner of presenting information or advice, the skills of using effective communication, demonstration of a caring attitude with an empathic approach and focusing upon the woman as an individual were seen to be important to minimise these incidents. Attention to women's perceptions and the consequences of conflicting advice must be addressed, otherwise the credibility and confidence in health professionals' knowledge and ability to support breast feeding is questioned, resulting in a valuable support network being selectively ignored. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. 2011 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21543 10.1016/j.midw.2010.02.003 ELSEVIER SCI LTD restricted
spellingShingle Hauck, Yvonne
Graham-Smith, C.
McInerney, J.
Kay, S.
Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title_full Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title_fullStr Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title_full_unstemmed Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title_short Western Australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
title_sort western australian women's perceptions of conflicting advice around breast feeding
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21543