Current Concepts and the Possible Protective Role of Breastfeeding - Essay Example

"Current Concepts and the Possible Protective Role of Breastfeeding" is a great example of a paper on pregnancy. The article I’m going to discuss is titled “Postpartum Stress: Current Concepts and the Possible Protective Role of Breastfeeding” and is written by Maureen Wimberly Groer, Mitzi Wilkinson Davis   Jean Hemphill.  (Groer, Davis, & Hemphill, 2002). Postpartum stress is one of the common symptoms during childbirth and can have an impact on the whole family. As a registered nurse, it becomes important that RNs must provide support other than the required medical support to help the family to actually become more equipped to face this stress.  This article basically discusses the stress during the postpartum and suggests that there is a biological mechanism present in breastfeeding which can actually help mothers to get away with this stress. This paper will provide a summary of the article, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the article as well as quality and bias. Article Summary

            This article discusses the stress experienced during the postpartum and suggests that breastfeeding can provide an alternative mechanism that can actually reduce the stress of the mothers during this. The overall data sources are taken from the nursing and biomedical research literature and only those studies have been chosen to have a significant number of participants during the study. The overall conclusion of this article indicates that the nurses understand the overall benefits breastfeeding can actually provide to the mothers and can create optimal health however this research suggests that mothers can use other biological or unexplored ways to reduce the stress to and without any significant external help from nurses or others.

Strengths and Weaknesses

            One of the key strengths of this article is that it presents an alternative to both the mothers as well as the Nurses to use other methods to overcome the stress. This research, therefore, indicates that other methods can also be effectively applied in order to deal with postpartum stress.

            The target audience in this article is both the mothers as well as nurses and discusses the role of both in terms of dealing with the stress and how both can play their part in terms of overcoming this stress. Research study indicates that neuroendocrinology of the lactating mother may have a calming effect on mothers to help them reduce the level of stress experienced during Postpartum.

            This article however has focused upon just one aspect of biological intervention which can actually help reduce the stress. This may seriously limit the ability of the nurses to actually train and equip mothers and families with the relevant education which can help them to overcome this stress.

The overall quality of evidence seems to be plausible because all the studies which have been reviewed in this article have been taken from nursing and biomedical research. Other than this, only those studies have been chosen where a significant number of participants involved in the research. Animal literature has also been discussed in this research study to increase the overall breadth of the study.

            Overall, this article suggests alternatives to manage postpartum stress successfully during childbirth by using biological and other unexplored mechanisms.

 

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