Thursday, March 21, 2013

Intellectual Pap

Hey kids!  I know it's been a while.  I fell down a Skyrim rabbit hole that I'm just now emerging from.

But emerge I must to rant about the inability of media sources to responsibly present medical study data. This is the study we're going to talk about today.  However you can pretty much pick any medical study from any medical journal and see the same thing.

The study in question discusses one hospital trying to become Baby Friendly, a designation that tells people "This hospital supports breastfeeding!".  They took away pacifiers as a step to become designated and their breastfeeding rates dropped.  OK on the surface that does look bad.  So if all you see is that headline you get articles like this and this and especially bad ones like this and this.  As a responsible Boob Nerd I refuse to take information like this at face value.  I like to actually go and read the study.  I know that's a difficult concept for some bloggers or journalists to consider.  Actually reading the source material they are going to report on sounds like it might be too much work.  However it might be a good idea anyway.  I'm not even suggesting they read the WHOLE study.  Even just the abstract is sufficient enough to tell them what they've written is utter bullshit.

This particular hospital had banned pacifiers but there was still full access to formula and the nurses had not been taught how to teach the mothers to soothe babies without using feeding or pacifiers yet.  Those are two equally important steps in becoming baby friendly.  The study tells you nothing more than nurse education and formula restriction should come before pacifier restriction in the Baby Friendly Designation process.  It upsets me greatly how the media has twisted this study to say "See!!!  We should use pacifiers!!!"    No!  That is not what this is advocating at all!  This study conclusion was that we need to do more studies.  Most hospitals are required to use evidence based practice.  If we used this article as our "evidence"  for not restricting pacifier use, our hospital would be a laughingstock.  I'd also like to note that Baby Friendly does not deny parents the ability to use pacifiers.  They just restrict the hospital's ability to hand them out for free.  If the parent's want to use a paci, by all means bring one in from home and use it.  I just can't give you a hospital freebie.  We continue to recommend use of pacifiers after breastfeeding is well established as a SIDS prevention tool.

So I guess what I'm really saying here is, if you see an article citing medical studies, it would behoove you to look up the study and read it yourself.  You cannot trust anyone else to spit the predigested informational pablum directly into your brain.  They nearly always get it wrong.

On a lighter note I also found breast shaped plush animals?  Dolls?  Thingies?  Um, I'm  not sure what to call them.  They are from Japan.  I know that's shocking because nothing weird EVER comes from Japan.
I have not yet figured out how to purchase these.  I cannot find the website.  But I need them.  All of them.  Now.