Barriers to breastfeeding: a qualitative study of the views of health professionals and lay counsellors.

Increasing breastfeeding initiation rates is now a target for the NHS. The attitudes and beliefs of health professionals are known to influence mothers' decisions to breastfeed. This paper describes a small qualitative study of health visitors' (n = 7), midwives' (n = 3) and lay breastfeeding counsellors' (n = 2) views of obstacles to breastfeeding. Interviews showed that day-to-day practice is informed by training and personal experience with research evidence having a more limited influence. Health professionals may experience tensions between these influences on their practice. Practical problems in accessing training make it difficult for health professionals to stay up-to-date with new evidence. Information from the study was used to develop a self-study training workbook for local health professionals.