Physicians and breastfeeding: Beliefs, knowledge, self-efficacy and counselling practices

A pilot-tested questionnaire was mailed to 325 obstetricians, pediatricians, family practitioners and general practitioners of a British Columbian maternity hospital to measure aspects relating to physicians' attitudes toward breastfeeding counselling. Response rate was 67.3%. The measures of self-efficacy, knowledge and beliefs were added to a regression model containing measures of gender, specialty, years in practice and personal or spousal breastfeeding experience to determine whether additional variance in counselling behaviour could be accounted for. Physicians attempted to convince women to breastfeed if: 1) they believed in the immune properties of breastmilk (OR = 1.23, SE = 0.07) and 2) they were confident in their own breastfeeding counselling (OR = 1.88, SE = 0.36) Likewise, encouraging women to continue breastfeeding in the face of breastfeeding problems was related to confidence breastfeeding counselling (OR = 1.22, SE = 0.10) and belief in the immune properties of breast milk (OR = 2.83, SE = 0.45).