Breastfeeding has nutritional, immunological, socioeconomic, and emotional benefits, and it is also relevant for making the parents and the whole family participate on the baby’s health. Therefore, breastfeeding could be seen as a health promotion activity. Nurses, who play a key role on it, are the ones who work with mothers and babies in the community, and have a major role in breastfeeding promotion. They are also reliable sources of information and support for them. However, weaning happens very often and professionals’ attitudes and roles may have something to do with this. The objective of this study is to examine professionals’ attitudes and roles towards breastfeeding, using the findings of a review of the literature, to find out how these might be interfering in breastfeeding care.

An integrative review of the literature was done. The selected databases were MEDLINE, Cinahl and PsycINFO in EBSCO. A total of 150 articles were found, of which 9 were finally selected. No limits were introduced for this search.

The findings show that, professionals see breastfeeding as a choice, and that they have interventionist and paternalistic approaches. Professionals provide advice to mothers based on professional or personal experiences especially when they lack knowledge regarding breastfeeding. The literature describes the lack of communication among the different professionals who care for the women who are breastfeeding, time constraints due to high workload, and hospital policies that do not support health professionals, as problems that health professionals face to better care for breastfeeding.

This review shows that professionals’ roles and attitudes towards breastfeeding are not always that positive. All in all, organisational aspects, the level of breastfeeding knowledge and teamwork, seem to influence breastfeeding care, and therefore, should be taken into account when promoting breastfeeding.

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Breastfeeding, health professionals, professional role, professional attitudes.

-06/2017-05/2018
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