Health professionals’ counselling on the use of infant formula: A scoping review

Abstract

Objective: Many parents experience lack of support and access to resources on how to prepare, handle, and provide formula milk to their infants. The purpose of this scoping review was to map and describe key information in existing research about how healthcare professionals receive information and how they inform and counsel parents about formula milk. Design: A scoping review fulfilling the PRISMA-ScR checklist criteria used systematic searches targeting the study objective in the databases Embase, MEDLINE, and CINAHL on February 8th and 9th, 2022. Results: Six studies with 959 participants in total were included. The research designs were focus group studies with and without combining individual interviews, an individual interview study, a study consisting of individual interviews and ethnographic observations, a survey, and a two-phase study consisting of a qualitative interview and a quantitative survey. Findings indicate lack of evidence-based information provided about infant formula by health care professionals when they counsel parents on formula feeding. Conclusions: Few studies focus on how healthcare professionals inform and counsel parents about formula milk. Health authorities should provide more evidence-based information to make formula feeding more feasible. Due to conflicting and omitted information, mothers often receive poor counselling on formula feeding.