Institutions were asked to indicate which types of edu- cators deliver information on breastfeeding and human lactation in the course curricula. The most common instructor was a member of the nurse practitioner faculty (78.8%), followed by a lactation specialist (45.5%). Two programs (6.1%) indicated that they uti- lize breastfeeding mothers and families. Outside of the clinical environment, 78.9% of programs (15 of 19 responses) indicated that their students shadowlactation specialists to gain practical experience related to breastfeeding and human lactation. In addition, 31.6% of programs utilize postpartum breastfeeding classes, 31.6% utilize Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs, 15.8% utilize breastfeeding support groups, and 10.5% utilize antepartum breastfeeding classes to give their students additional experience.
Table 4 summarizes the types of resources that PNP programs use for the breastfeeding and human lactation education incorporated into their curriculum. More than three quarters of programs use current research (84.8%) and clinical guidelines (78.8%) to provide education. More than half of the programs use books (54.4%) and Web sites (60.6%). Other sources of information used in- clude personal experiences (36.4%), published manuals and pamphlets (36.4%), classic research (33.3%), dem- onstrations (27.3%), and videos (21.2%).
Notably, only 12.5% of programs indicated that their curriculum does not take into account either PNCB or ANCC content about infant feeding and breastfeeding on PNP certification examinations. The majority of pro- grams (46.9%) account for both PNCB and ANCC exam- ination content, with 43.8% of programs accounting only for PNCB examination content and 3.1% of pro- grams accounting only for ANCC examination content.