Background: Breastfeeding support from health professionals can be effective in influencing a mother’s decision to initiate and maintain breastfeeding. This paper is aimed at finding the knowledge, attitude and practices of nurses regarding breastfeeding, working in maternity and neonatal departments.

Methods: This is a cross sectional study conducted among 100 nurses working in maternity and neonatology departments in two tertiary care hospitals in coastal Andhra Pradesh. The nurses’ knowledge, attitudes and practices were assessed with the help of a self–administered questionnaire with multiple choice questions. Socio demographic data including previous personal breastfeeding experience, previous training in newborn care programmes is also included. Chi square tests with p value and correlation coefficient were calculated and results were analysed.

Results: Several factors were found to influence breastfeeding knowledge and attitudes, including training in at least one of the newborn care training programmes(p<0.05); especially Facility Based Newborn Care (FBNC) training programme(p<0.05). Educational qualification, prior personal breastfeeding experience, place of working did not have a significant impact on their breastfeeding scores.

Conclusions: Based on this study, it appears that  a specialised breastfeeding/ newborn care training programme can improve breastfeeding knowledge, attitudes and practices among nurses, thereby helping and guiding breastfeeding mothers.