Breastfeeding Counseling Protocol During Hospitalization of Mother/Infant Dyads in Rooming-in: A Methodological Development Study

Breastfeeding counseling is an effective public health intervention. However, there is a scarcity of studies detailing protocols, especially those applied during the dyad’s stay in the Rooming-In Unit. Thus, this research aimed to describe a breastfeeding counseling protocol during the dyad’s hospitalization in Rooming-in. A methodological development study was carried out from June to September 2022 in four stages: discovering from a bibliographical survey; defining the target audience, contexts, and answers to the research question; developing from the construction of the instrument; and delivering the final product after content validation by eight experts. The intervention components protocol includes items necessary for execution; intervention script; breastfeeding assessment instrument; adverse situations, solutions, and initial difficulties in breastfeeding; and counseling approach in the face of situations. For each item of the protocol, a Likert scale was applied, and the Content Validity Index was calculated to verify the agreement between the experts. Items with agreement above 80% were considered valid. Content validation was performed in a single evaluation round. The final version of the protocol consisted of 11 sections. It describes in detail the necessary conditions, expected and unexpected procedures, and how to intervene using the counseling approach in the initial difficulties presented during the hospitalization of the dyad in Rooming-in.