Effectiveness of an optional breastfeeding course for multidisciplinary undergraduate healthcare students: A quasi-experimental study

This study aimed to examine and quantify the effectiveness of an optional breastfeeding course for multidisciplinary undergraduate healthcare students and to provide advice for education improvement based on students’ characteristics and learning feedback. Breastfeeding has received global awareness and educating undergraduate healthcare students is a prospective way to promote breastfeeding. This is the first report from mainland China to verify the education effects and formulate a proposal for improvement. A quasi-experimental study with a one-group pretest-posttest design. An optional breastfeeding course covering eight topics based on the Health Belief Model was conducted for multidisciplinary students in a medical college. The Breastfeeding Knowledge Questionnaire, Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale and Breastfeeding Promotion Intention Scale were completed for pre- and post-education comparison. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test, MannWhitney U test, KruskalWallis test and chi-square test were used for statistical analysis. The class average normalized gain and individual students’ normalized gain were calculated to quantify the effectiveness from the perspective of learning gain. From March to November 2021, 102 students specialized mainly in nursing, clinical medicine, medical imaging technology and midwifery took the course. Knowledge, attitudes and intention scores improved significantly (Z = 8.70, 8.72, 7.64, respectively, p < .001) and the class average normalized gains were 81.0%, 52.3% and 70.6%, respectively. Insignificant differences were found for students of different genders and categories of specialties (p > .05). Students of first year had significantly higher individual normalized gains (p < .05). In learning feedback, the top-ranked advice for course improvement was to increase practice and experience (75.5%). This optional breastfeeding course produced medium to high learning gains for multidisciplinary healthcare undergraduates. Independent breastfeeding education based on behavioral theory for multidisciplinary students is recommended to be conducted in medical colleges. The addition of practice and experience may add value to such education.