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Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana

BACKGROUND: Employed mothers have lower rates of breastfeeding, including health workers who are supposed to be advocates for breastfeeding. These working mothers need a supportive workplace environment to breastfeed, yet Ghana’s breastfeeding policy neither mentions the workplace breastfeeding envi...

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Autores principales: Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga, Tindana, Juliana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10265844/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37316909
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13006-023-00565-1
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author Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga
Tindana, Juliana
author_facet Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga
Tindana, Juliana
author_sort Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Employed mothers have lower rates of breastfeeding, including health workers who are supposed to be advocates for breastfeeding. These working mothers need a supportive workplace environment to breastfeed, yet Ghana’s breastfeeding policy neither mentions the workplace breastfeeding environment nor offers any information on it. METHODS: A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was used in this study to determine: facilities with a complete breastfeeding support environment (BFSE); breastfeeding challenges experienced; coping strategies and motivators for breastfeeding among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana; and Management’s awareness of the need for an institutional breastfeeding support policy. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis respectively. The research was conducted from January to April 2020. RESULTS: All facilities (39) had incomplete BFSE and management representatives of health facilities (39) did not have and were not aware that their respective facilities needed to have a specific workplace breastfeeding policy that fed into the national policy agenda. Breastfeeding challenges at workplaces included: lack of private space for breastfeeding; inadequate support from co-workers and management; emotional stress; and inadequate breastfeeding breaks and work options. Women adapted to these challenges by employing coping strategies such as: bringing children to work with / without caretakers; leaving children at home; seeking support from co-workers and family members; feeding children with supplementary foods; adding annual leave to maternity leave; breastfeeding in cars / offices; and sending children to daycare. Interestingly, the women were still motivated to breastfeed. Health benefits of breastmilk, the convenience and readily available nature of breastmilk, moral obligation to breastfeed, and cheap cost of breastmilk emerged as key motivators to breastfeed. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that health workers have poor BFSE and are faced with numerous breastfeeding challenges. There is a need for programs that improve BFSE in health facilities.
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spelling pubmed-102658442023-06-15 Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga Tindana, Juliana Int Breastfeed J Research BACKGROUND: Employed mothers have lower rates of breastfeeding, including health workers who are supposed to be advocates for breastfeeding. These working mothers need a supportive workplace environment to breastfeed, yet Ghana’s breastfeeding policy neither mentions the workplace breastfeeding environment nor offers any information on it. METHODS: A convergent parallel mixed-methods design was used in this study to determine: facilities with a complete breastfeeding support environment (BFSE); breastfeeding challenges experienced; coping strategies and motivators for breastfeeding among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana; and Management’s awareness of the need for an institutional breastfeeding support policy. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis respectively. The research was conducted from January to April 2020. RESULTS: All facilities (39) had incomplete BFSE and management representatives of health facilities (39) did not have and were not aware that their respective facilities needed to have a specific workplace breastfeeding policy that fed into the national policy agenda. Breastfeeding challenges at workplaces included: lack of private space for breastfeeding; inadequate support from co-workers and management; emotional stress; and inadequate breastfeeding breaks and work options. Women adapted to these challenges by employing coping strategies such as: bringing children to work with / without caretakers; leaving children at home; seeking support from co-workers and family members; feeding children with supplementary foods; adding annual leave to maternity leave; breastfeeding in cars / offices; and sending children to daycare. Interestingly, the women were still motivated to breastfeed. Health benefits of breastmilk, the convenience and readily available nature of breastmilk, moral obligation to breastfeed, and cheap cost of breastmilk emerged as key motivators to breastfeed. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that health workers have poor BFSE and are faced with numerous breastfeeding challenges. There is a need for programs that improve BFSE in health facilities. BioMed Central 2023-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10265844/ /pubmed/37316909 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13006-023-00565-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Kubuga, Clement Kubreziga
Tindana, Juliana
Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title_full Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title_fullStr Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title_full_unstemmed Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title_short Breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the Upper East Region of Ghana
title_sort breastfeeding environment and experiences at the workplace among health workers in the upper east region of ghana
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10265844/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37316909
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13006-023-00565-1
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