10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding in the Hospital Setting

Are you looking for a course that can ensure your staff have the knowledge and skills they need to successfully demonstrate competency in the areas defined by Baby Friendly USA’s 6th Edition guidelines and criteria? If so, you’ve come to the right place.

We built this course based entirely on that goal. By the end of this course, students will know exactly what is expected of them, and they will have what it takes to demonstrate competency.

Elegant Design

In this course, each of the 10 Steps is addressed in a separate module. Learners proceed through the video lesson at their own pace, while interactive elements, knowledge checks, and opportunities to use new concepts keep things interesting. The learning outcomes for each module are simply the performance indicators set by Baby Friendly USA for that step. It’s simple, it’s straightforward – and it works. For studying and retention, each step is accompanied by a downloadable document listing each performance indicator for that step, along with the info needed to study, practice, and demonstrate competency in that area.

Expert Instructors

Our instructors don’t just teach – they are practitioners who have seen facilities successfully through Baby Friendly designation and redesignation. Because they know the process from the inside out, they deliver the content your staff needs to know in a way that will resonate, translate, and be remembered long after they close the last module.

Real-World Results

With the new competency-based assessment focus, your staff’s clinical care will be evaluated by observation and specific questions. With this course, they will be prepared. And even more importantly, they will be ready to provide the skilled lactation support parents need to get families off to the best possible start on their infant feeding journey.

Included in the Course

Step 1A, 1B, 1C: Comply fully with Code/WHA Resolutions; have written infant feeding policies that are routinely communicated to staff and parents; establish ongoing monitoring and data management systems.The first three modules go deep on the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes & all subsequent WHA Resolutions, covering history, contents, importance, enforcement, and monitoring. They also cover hospital infant feeding policies, how to communicate them to parents, medical supplementation, and supporting families’ feeding choices. Lastly, they provide an in-depth look at QI programs and why they are critical to the Baby Friendly Initiative.

Instructors: Sekeita Lewis-Johnson, DNP, FNP-BC, IBCLC, Accredited Provider Program Director LER; Lisa Mandell, MBA, IBCLC, a private practice lactation consultant who is active in advocacy work with expertise in business and marketing.

Step 2: Ensure that staff have sufficient knowledge, competence, and skills to support breastfeeding.This module addresses how to communicate with parents about lactation, as well as trimester-based education, providing key knowledge and skills to share with parents at critical times throughout pregnancy and the early days after birth.

Instructor: Angela Love-Zaranka, Program Director for LER, has worked in clinical lactation care for over 25 years. She has helped many hospitals through the Baby Friendly USA designation and redesignation process and consulted with hospitals around the world to help them meet the WHO and UNICEF BFI standards.

Step 3: Discuss importance and management of breastfeeding with pregnant women and their families.Sekeita Lewis-Johnson shows your staff how to engage in truly meaningful dialogue with families, prenatally and through birth and the early days. She takes on concepts like understanding health literacy, truly informed feeding choices, providing anticipatory guidance that works, discussing the benefits for babies and parents of exclusive breastfeeding, and respectful communication with families who choose to formula feed. After this module, your staff will know what to tell parents about breastfeeding/chestfeeding and how to tell them in a meaningful way.

Instructor: Sekeita Lewis-Johnson, DNP, FNP-BC, IBCLC, Accredited Provider Program Director LER

Step 4: Facilitate immediate and uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact and support mothers to initiate breastfeeding as soon as possible after birth.Early initiation of breastfeeding reduces infant mortality, and immediate skin-to-skin contact facilitates successful initiation. In this module, your staff will learn the biological and psychological benefits of skin-to-skin contact for both mother and parent and how to successfully facilitate it, regardless of method of birth, including how to maintain it during room transfers. They will also understand why suckling at the breast during the first 1-2 hours after birth is key and how to help babies and parents achieve that crucial first feed.

Instructor: Sarah Stilling, MSN, APRN, CPNP-AC/PC, IBCLC, is a pediatric acute care nurse practitioner who attends high risk deliveries and works as a newborn nursery hospitalist.

Step 5: Support mothers to initiate and maintain breastfeeding and manage common difficulties.This module contains the most information of any module in the course. But our instructors’ engaging teaching style and clear explanations make the information easy to access and remember. This lesson provides the tools and information your staff needs to feel confident with: position and latch, maintaining lactation during separation, risk factors for delayed lactogenesis II, managing hypoglycemia, the special challenges of late preterm infants, nipple pain and trauma, jaundice, weight loss, engorgement, and more.

Instructors: Angela Love-Zaranka, Program Director for LER, has worked in clinical lactation care for over 25 years. She has helped many hospitals through the Baby Friendly USA designation and redesignation process and consulted with hospitals around the world to help them meet the WHO and UNICEF BFI standards. Dalaney Young, BS-MCH, IBCLC, has 10+ years of experience in lactation care, in private practice and hospital settings.

Step 6: Do not provide breastfed newborn any food or fluids other than breastmilk, unless medically indicated.Reviews why exclusive breastfeeding is important, potential contraindications to breastmilk feeding, medical indications for supplementation, risks of giving a breastfed newborn any foods or fluids in the absence medical indication, safety of medications during lactation, best alternatives to breastmilk when a baby cannot be exclusively breastfed, safe preparation of infant formula, and more.

Instructor: Angela Love-Zaranka, Program Director for LER, has worked in clinical lactation care for over 25 years. She has helped many hospitals through the Baby Friendly USA designation and redesignation process and consulted with hospitals around the world to help them meet the WHO and UNICEF BFI standards.

Step 7: Enable mothers and their infants to remain together and to practice rooming-in 24 hours a day.Rooming-in is necessary to enable parents to practice responsive feeding and learn to read and respond to their infants’ feeding cues. In this lesson, your staff will learn the benefits of rooming-in, and how to facilitate parents to room-in safely. It also includes how to plan for and document separation when it does occur.

Instructor: Courtney Polk, MSN, RN, IBCLC, has been a registered nurse since 2006 and became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2015. Since that time, she has taught numerous prenatal classes--breastfeeding, baby care, childbirth, new dads, and more.

Step 8: Support mothers to recognize and respond to their infant’s cues for feeding.New parents have a learning curve when it comes to caring for their baby. After this module, your staff will be confident in explaining feeding cues and why responsive feeding is important, as well as working with parents of preterm, late preterm, or vulnerable infants to help them recognize subtle signs and state shifts that mean their baby is ready to feed. They will also be prepared to help parents who are overwhelmed or distressed with the amount of their baby’s crying.

Instructor: Courtney Polk, MSN, RN, IBCLC, has been a registered nurse since 2006 and became an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in 2015. Since that time, she has taught numerous prenatal classes--breastfeeding, baby care, childbirth, new dads, and more.

Step 9: Counsel mothers on the use and risks of feeding bottles, teats, and pacifiers.Provides the skills and information necessary to counsel breastfeeding parents on the safe use of pacifiers and bottles and how they may interfere with the development of optimal feeding.

Instructor: Sekeita Lewis-Johnson, DNP, FNP-BC, IBCLC, Accredited Provider Program Director at LER.

Step 10: Coordinate discharge so that parents and their infants have timely access to ongoing support and care.Discharge planning and continuity of care are the topic of the last module in this course. Prepare your staff to develop individualized discharge feeding plans that ensure parents know the warning signs of breastfeeding difficulty and when and how to contact a healthcare provider once they are at home. The final step in successful hospital-based lactation care, this step can be a game-changer for families.

Instructor: Sekeita Lewis-Johnson, DNP, FNP-BC, IBCLC, Accredited Provider Program Director at LER

Price: $179.00