Results
Most primary-care staff working with mother and infants in the PCHCs
(58/63 pediatricians, 43/63 pediatric nurses and 37/47 midwives)
attended the 20-h training course. A total of 200 hours of short-stay
practice were offered to several neonatologists, pediatricians, midwives
and pediatric nurses. Four annual conferences and six workshops welcomed
nearly 900 professionals from all over the AC.
Over a four year period, 3,512 families visited the clinic 11,801 times.
The number of first visits grew steadily from 503 in 2014 to 1456 in
2017. Most (79.5%, n: 2792) were referred by primary-care midwives and
pediatricians. A large proportion of visits (39.7%, n: 1394) came from
other HDs. Leading consultations were for breast pain and infants’
thriving problems (diagnosis at discharge in Table 2). The mean number
of follow-up visits at the clinic was three (range 0-14) and EBF was
significantly more prevalent “at discharge” than “at entry” (Table
3). Financial constrains disallowed a second population survey, thus
hindering adequate assessment of the clinic’s impact on breastfeeding
rates. As a proxy, for two weeks in 2016, clients of the clinic with
infants younger than six months were invited to complete a
self-administered on-line survey: Out of a total N: 298 respondents, EBF
was reported by 236 families (79.1% ). Satisfaction with services was
high, 67% of mothers reported to have achieved their breastfeeding
goals and a very high mean level of satisfaction (4.8/5) reported by the
2013 families who responded the satisfaction questionnaire (Table 4).
The costs per visit at the BFU-clinic were low (Table 5).
The group-support weekly-meetings welcomed around 2400 families. Three
WhatsApp-based mobile-version breastfeeding support groups (reaching
more than 700 families) and one formal BMSG emerged from these meetings
(WhatsApp. 2018). The BFU collaborated with BMSG’ training programs for
assessors, and jointly celebrated the World Breastfeeding Week every
year.
During the second year, we started collaborating with the Foundation for
Research: FISABIO (FISABIO, 2018). At present, the BFU
participates in 2 different breastfeeding research projects. In 2015, we
received an award of excellence from the Spanish Ministry of Health
(MOH) and the project was published on the Ministry’s website for
reproducibility (MSCBS, 2015) .