A descriptive qualitative review of the barriers relating to breast-feeding counselling.

The purpose of this review was to describe barriers in breast-feeding counselling considering it from the viewpoint of health professionals. CINAHL, MEDLINE and Cochrane databases were searched from 1950 to 2008. In total, 40 scientific research articles in English, Swedish or Finnish related to breast-feeding counselling were included and analysed using thematic analysis. The quality of the studies was also assessed. The main barriers were deficits in knowledge, resources, counselling skills and the counsellor's negative attitude. Conflicting advice, lack of guidelines, sufficiency of counselling and perceiving of the personal education needs were examples of the indicated barriers. The most commonly described barriers in breast-feeding counselling were limitations in breast-feeding knowledge. Developing of the measurements to assess the barriers in breast-feeding counselling is needed.