Residency curriculum improves breastfeeding care.

Objectives: Multiple studies have revealed inadequacies in breastfeeding education during residency, and results of recent studies have confirmed that attitudes of practicing pediatricians toward breastfeeding are deteriorating. In this we study evaluated whether a residency curriculum improved physician knowledge, practice patterns, and confidence in providing breastfeeding care and whether implementation of this curriculum was associated with increased breastfeeding rates in patients.

Subjects And Methods: A prospective cohort of 417 residents was enrolled in a controlled trial of a novel curriculum developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics in conjunction with experts from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Academy of Family Physicians, and Association of Pediatric Program Directors.

Breastfeeding and the use of human milk.

Considerable advances have occurred in recent years in the scientific knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding, the mechanisms underlying these benefits, and in the clinical management of breastfeeding. This policy statement on breastfeeding replaces the 1997 policy statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics and reflects this newer knowledge and the supporting publications. The benefits of breastfeeding for the infant, the mother, and the community are summarized, and recommendations to guide the pediatrician and other health care professionals in assisting mothers in the initiation and maintenance of breastfeeding for healthy term infants and high-risk infants are presented.

Premature mourning and failure to mourn: their relationship to conflict between mothers and intellectually normal children.

The significance of mourning as related to the condition of infants at birth is examined with respect to the incomplete working through of mourning reactions when a critically ill neonate survives, and the failure to mourn when defects are discovered in a newborn. Similar parent-child difficulties resulting from superficially opposite parental reactions to the psychological traumas are described, and suggestions for further study are offered.