Effectiveness of the Distance Education Program on the Mothers Empowerment in Breastfeeding

Introduction: Mothers need the necessary skills with regard to empowerment in the successful breastfeeding. Distance education is a learning process that learning and teaching take place in the separate environments. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the distance education program on the mothers empowerment in breastfeeding.Methods: A clinical trial study was done on 72 nulliparous pregnant women 28-32 weeks with normal pregnancy referring to the midwifery clinics of the educational hospitals of Babol University of Medical Sciences in 1397. The qualified women were randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups based on the random-number table. The breastfeeding training packages were sent to women in the intervention group via Telegram every week until 37 weeks of gestation. Mothers empowerment in breastfeeding (primary outcome) was assessed using the breastfeeding empowerment questionnaire (via 7 domains) pre intervention, 4 and 8 weeks postpartum, and the exclusive breastfeeding rate (secondary outcome) after childbirth. Data were analyzed using SPSS software, Version 16. The level of significance was less than 0.05.Results: Based on the repeated measured tests, scores for all domains and also the total score of the mothers empowerment in breastfeeding between two groups had increased during the study period, while there was a significant difference between the increaseal trends of the maternal empowerment domains in two groups (Intraction P-value ‹0.001). Also, the prevalence of the exclusive breastfeeding (secondary outcome) at 6 months was significantly higher in the intervension group (81.8% and 57.1% in the intervention and control groups) (P-value = 0.028).Conclusion: The distance education program led to increase mothers empowerment in breastfeeding and the exclusive breastfeeding rate at 6 months of age after childbirth. Applying this educational method without the need of sharing place and time for communication, is recommended to the planners to promote breastfeeding

Keywords:

Education , Distance , Power (psychology) , Breastfeeding