Virginia hospital earns coveted ‘baby-friendly’ designation

With eight mother/baby rooms, the Family Birth Center at Culpeper Regional Hospital is small compared with many hospitals in major cities.  It has 25 full- and part-time nurses, and as a level-one facility, has no neo-natal intensive care unit. 

But the rural center can boast about something no other Virginia hospital can:  The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have designated it as a “baby friendly” hospital.

The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is a global program that recognizes hospitals and birthing centers that offer an optimal level of care for lactation.  Breast-feeding boosts a baby’s health, and encouraging it in the United States could help the nation’s health-care system save millions of dollars through decreased hospitalizations and pediatric clinic visits, according to BFHI.

To receive the baby-friendly designation, a hospital or birth center must meet these 10 criteria:

• maintain a written breast-feeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health-care staff;
• train all health-care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy;
• inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breast-feeding;
• help mothers initiate breast-feeding within one hour of birth;
• show mothers how to breast-feed and how to maintain lactation, even if they are separated from their infants;
• give infants no food or drink other than breast milk, unless medically indicated;
• practice “rooming in” — allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day;
• encourage unrestricted breast-feeding;
• give no pacifiers or artificial nipples to breast-feeding infants; and
• foster the establishment of breast-feeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.

To date, 79 hospitals in the United States have met those 10 criteria and received the baby-friendly designation, and WHO and UNICEF have awarded another 19,000 facilities around the world with the designation as well.

Earning the designation required a sustained commitment from Culpeper Regional Hospital.  “It took us five years to achieve it, start to finish,” says Cindy Curtis, RNC IBCLC CCE, coordinator for Culpeper Regional’s lactation center.  “It’s a financial commitment from the hospital, too.  We don’t accept anything from companies because it would look like an endorsement.  The hospital has to purchase things like formula, nipples and bottles at fair-market value.”

After assuring that it was meeting the 10 criteria, Culpeper Regional Hospital invited two assessors from WHO and UNICEF to evaluate the birth center on-site.  “The assessors visited us during the first week in November last year, and they were here a day and a half,” Curtis says.  “They interviewed almost every nurse we have as well as five of our seven doctors.  They also interviewed our hospital administrators and the director of the unit.”

The assessors also interviewed about 30 patients who had delivered babies at the hospital, which posed a logistical challenge for Curtis.  “We do 45 births a month, so we may have three to five moms at a time,” she says.  “We had to contact moms by phone and ask if they would be willing to talk to the assessors.  I didn’t have a problem getting moms to come in.  They were eager to be a part of it.”

Typically, it takes six to eight weeks to receive the assessors’ results, but with the holidays looming, the process was accelerated.  Culpeper Regional Hospital received word of its baby-friendly designation on Dec. 10.

Being a small facility may have helped Culpeper Regional earn its baby-friendly designation, Curtis says, because larger hospitals might have a tougher time educating the hundreds of nurses they have on staff.  The designation is valid for five years, after which the hospital will need to submit to another assessment.

Curtis credits the Family Birth Center’s staff with making the designation possible.  “You can put a building anywhere,” she says.  “It’s what’s in the hospital that makes it special.  And that’s our staff.  They really make it special.”

For more information, visit BabyFriendlyUSA.org.