UCC School of Nursing and Midwifery Annual Report 2020

Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC

Summer Undergraduate Research Awards in Maternity, Families and Primary Care Theme

Above: Arisha Muhammed

establish breastfeeding without the usual breastfeeding support structures. The aim of this qualitative, descriptive study is to explore women’s breastfeeding experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 40 women during June 2020, using one to one, semi structured interviews and analysed using Burnard’s 14 step process and NVivo software.

Student: Arisha Muhammed, BSc in Midwifery, Year 3

Supervisor: Dr Margaret Murphy, Lecturer, and Maternity, Families and Primary Care Research Team Member

Project Title: Qualitative descriptive exploration of women’s experiences of breastfeeding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite overwhelming health, economic, and sociological evidence of benefit, breastfeeding rates in Ireland remain consistently lowest among comparable high-income countries. An estimated 60% of Irish infants are in receipt of any breastfeeding on discharge from hospital, while only 50% are exclusively breastfed on discharge. Lack of support and the introduction of early supplementation has been shown to be associated with early cessation or failure to establish effective breastfeeding. Breastfeeding women are reliant upon the professional support of Public Health Nurses and General Practitioners, and voluntary peer to peer support services. During the COVID-19 pandemic Irish society was in lock down from March 27th, 2020. This led to restrictions on postnatal women accessing face to face support from healthcare staff such as Public Health Nurses and General Practitioners. Anecdotally peer to peer support organisations have seen an increased demand from women requesting breastfeeding support. Women were trying to

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