Abstract

KNOWLEDGE REGARDING BREASTFEEDING PRACTICES AMONG DOCTORS

*Dr. Rabia Javed, Dr. Rafia Shahid, Dr. Ujala Saleem, Professor Dr. Samina Asghar, Dr. Maryum Shafiq, Dr. Amina Mirza, Dr. Shawana Shahid, Dr. Nishat Shafiq Khan

Abstract

Background: Breastfeeding is an important foundation for a healthy life. It is important to follow optimal breastfeeding practices which is only possible through proper knowledge. The present research was carried out to assess the knowledge of doctors regarding breastfeeding practices. Methodology: This was a one-week observational descriptive cross-sectional study. Using simple randomized sampling, out of 150 participants, 120 completely filled a self-designed 9-item questionnaire. The data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 22. Descriptive analysis was used for the individual responses to each question to be expressed as frequencies and percentages. The total knowledge score was 45, 5 marks for each correct answer. Score less than 25 was considered "poor", 25-35 as "good" and more than 35 as "excellent" score. Mean and standard deviation was calculated for the total knowledge score. Chi-square test was used to find out the correlation between different demographic variables and the total knowledge score. P-value was set at 0.05. Results: The overall response rate was 80%(120/150). The mean age of the respondents was 34.09 +/- 5.4. 67.5% of the participating doctors had less than one year of clinical experience, 60.83% of the doctors were working in gynecology department with the female doctors representing 80.83% of the total. The mean knowledge score of the participants was 33.34 +/- 4.32. Majority of the doctors were equipped with sufficient knowledge regarding breastfeeding practices. 71.98% achieved good score, while 17.46% achieved excellent scores, with only 10.56% of them achieving poor score. The mean knowledge score was positively related to the years of practice, the specialty working in and the gender, giving a p-value of

Keywords: Knowledge, Doctors, Breastfeeding practices.