Promoting individualized breastfeeding experiences.

Breastfeeding is beneficial for the baby and the mother, but is yet to be successfully practiced by newly delivered women as proposed in the Healthy People 2020 goal. Most breastfeeding education during the prenatal or postpartum period provides adequate information for interested women. However, mothers need individualized client-professional interactions and follow-up after hospital discharge. This article describes the breastfeeding experiences of two women and the implications for nurses and other healthcare professionals in relation to efforts to promote breastfeeding. Two anecdotal case studies are presented illustrating that even when mothers have resources and education, the breastfeeding education can be frustrating and misunderstood. Nurses can master the skill of closing the feedback loop in breastfeeding education by assessing and clarifying women's interpretation of breastfeeding information they received. This nursing skill can empower mothers to make informed decisions for effective and sustained breastfeeding.

Student nurses as school nurse extenders.

The severe underuse of school nurses leaves students with unaddressed health needs that impact their safety and learning ability. An undergraduate pediatric clinical focusing on nursing students and the role of a school nurse in an elementary school setting can be a unique approach to combining the needs of school children and educating student nurses. One school of nursing created such a project to help address these needs and collect data on the activities student nurses performed in school nurse role and their impact on student health. This project serves as both a practice improvement project and an innovation in pediatric clinical education. The purposes of this project were to quantify baccalaureate nursing student activities related to the school nurse role and to evaluate the results that have the potential to impact on student health in an urban elementary school.