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New mothers receive inadequate physician advice on infant care
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Many new mothers reported receiving no advice from health care professionals regarding aspects of infant care — including supine sleep, breast-feeding and immunization — and advice that was received was often inconsistent with recommendations, according to NIH study results.
“Earlier studies have shown that new mothers listen to their physicians,” Marian Willinger, PhD, of the pregnancy and perinatology branch at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), said in a press release. “This survey shows that physicians have an opportunity to provide new mothers with much-needed advice on how to improve infant health and even save infant lives.”
To determine the advice influencing a mother’s choices regarding recommended safe sleep and other infant care practices, and whether that advice was consistent with current recommendations, researcher Staci R. Eisenberg, MD, pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, and colleagues surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,031 mothers of infants aged 2 to 6 months. Questions evaluated the advice mothers received from physicians, birth hospital nurses, family, and the media on immunization, breast-feeding, sleep position, sleep location and pacifier use.
The researchers performed multivariable logistic regression analyses to determine influences associated with mothers who received recommendation-consistent advice.
While physicians were the predominant source of reported advice, approximately 20% of mothers reported no physician advice on breast-feeding or sleep position, and more than 50% of mothers reported no advice regarding pacifier use or sleep location, according to survey results.
Figure 1. A mother sharing her room with an infant child.
Source: National Institutes of Health
Furthermore, researchers found that 10% to 15% of reported physician advice was not consistent with recommendations for breast-feeding and pacifier use, and more than 25% was inconsistent with recommendations for sleep position or location.
Advice from family also showed variable consistency: 20% of advice about breast-feeding and about 66% of advice about sleep position, sleep location and pacifier use were not consistent with recommendations. The media was reported as a source of advice less than 50% of the time, with the exception of approximately 70% of mothers reporting advice about breast-feeding. This advice frequently was not consistent with recommendations.
Tonse Raju
“The research shows most information mothers receive comes from doctors and nurses,” Tonse Raju, MD, chief of the pregnancy and perinatology branch at NICHD, told Infectious Diseases in Children. “Therefore, physicians should be in a great position to step in and provide their patients with important and accurate information that will improve children’s health and save lives.”
The researchers said that black and Hispanic mothers were more likely than white mothers to report advice consistent with recommendations for all infant care practices, except sleep position. This finding refuted previous literature that white mothers exhibited “generally higher rates of adherence with recommendations.”
“As a physician, these findings made me stop and really think about how we communicate important information to new parents,” Eisenberg said in the release. “We may need to be clearer and more specific in telling new mothers about safe sleep recommendations. From a public health perspective, there is a real opportunity to engage families and the media to promote infant health.” – by Bob Stott
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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