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The implementation of preventive interventions for the community must
entail an active offer of our health services, otherwise the population we
serve will be mainly composed by healthy persons, the ones least in need
of medical help.
In order to reach the disadvantaged, from 1998 to the present time our
home visiting nurses use to contact every mother after delivery, in the
obstetrical department of our hospital.
A home visit is proposed, which primarily aims at promoting breastfeeding,
timely vaccinations, and at instructing the family about global child
care, the prevention of home accidents and sudden infant death syndrome.
In fact, through this visit, we are able to detect cases with special
needs, the ones we never had the chance to encounter in our ambulatory,
before we started with the home visits.
These are the cases we take in charge with particular care. After
detecting a new case, in our regular team sessions we prepare a
personalized plan of intervention, stating explicitly the means we intend
to use and the objectives we want to reach for every single case.The
visiting nurse is the principal responsible of that particular project,
and the first referent of that particular family. Around the case, she
puts in motion a web of professionals, pertaining to every agency,
internal or external to the local department of health, whose cooperation
is deemed useful for the accomplishment of the project.
The nurse enacts a regular surveillance, in order to ensure that the
members of the family follow the guidelines we established with them.
Contrary to the expectations of some of our staff, the home visit was
accepted by a fair percentage (70%) of the families contacted. Through
this project, we were able to encounter citizens in the disadvantaged
sector of our society, individuals often neglected by, because unknown
even to, social services.
We were able to practice new strategies of intervention, more attuned to
our mandate of community pediatricians and nurses. Although time-
consuming, the home visits might be a long-term cost-effective practice
and certainly one which unifies procedures and human and material
resources.
As such, it could be the logical complement to the training described by
Buzzetti e Cattaneo [1]. In fact, we are now coupling the described
practice with the administration of the OMS-Unicef 40 hours’ training
course on breastfeeding counseling to all the professionals of our local
department of health involved in the promotion of lactation.
Maria Antonietta Grimaldi, MD, Oristano, Italia
Competing interests: none declared
References
[1] Cattaneo A., Buzzetti, R Effect on rates of breast feeding of
training for the Baby Friendly
Hospital Initiative, BMJ 2001;323:1358–62
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests:
No competing interests
04 July 2003
Maria A. Grimaldi
Community Paediatrician
Consultorio Familiare AUSL n. 5 Oristano 09170 Oristano, Italy
Promoting breastfeeding as a pivotal practice for caring the disadvantaged families.
The implementation of preventive interventions for the community must
entail an active offer of our health services, otherwise the population we
serve will be mainly composed by healthy persons, the ones least in need
of medical help.
In order to reach the disadvantaged, from 1998 to the present time our
home visiting nurses use to contact every mother after delivery, in the
obstetrical department of our hospital.
A home visit is proposed, which primarily aims at promoting breastfeeding,
timely vaccinations, and at instructing the family about global child
care, the prevention of home accidents and sudden infant death syndrome.
In fact, through this visit, we are able to detect cases with special
needs, the ones we never had the chance to encounter in our ambulatory,
before we started with the home visits.
These are the cases we take in charge with particular care. After
detecting a new case, in our regular team sessions we prepare a
personalized plan of intervention, stating explicitly the means we intend
to use and the objectives we want to reach for every single case.The
visiting nurse is the principal responsible of that particular project,
and the first referent of that particular family. Around the case, she
puts in motion a web of professionals, pertaining to every agency,
internal or external to the local department of health, whose cooperation
is deemed useful for the accomplishment of the project.
The nurse enacts a regular surveillance, in order to ensure that the
members of the family follow the guidelines we established with them.
Contrary to the expectations of some of our staff, the home visit was
accepted by a fair percentage (70%) of the families contacted. Through
this project, we were able to encounter citizens in the disadvantaged
sector of our society, individuals often neglected by, because unknown
even to, social services.
We were able to practice new strategies of intervention, more attuned to
our mandate of community pediatricians and nurses. Although time-
consuming, the home visits might be a long-term cost-effective practice
and certainly one which unifies procedures and human and material
resources.
As such, it could be the logical complement to the training described by
Buzzetti e Cattaneo [1]. In fact, we are now coupling the described
practice with the administration of the OMS-Unicef 40 hours’ training
course on breastfeeding counseling to all the professionals of our local
department of health involved in the promotion of lactation.
Maria Antonietta Grimaldi, MD, Oristano, Italia
Competing interests: none declared
References
[1] Cattaneo A., Buzzetti, R Effect on rates of breast feeding of
training for the Baby Friendly
Hospital Initiative, BMJ 2001;323:1358–62
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests