Efficient nurse–family contact for a shared teaching need
The correct choice is a
group conference with the five mothers. When several families have the same learning need and no infant has an individual feeding or growth problem, gathering them once is more efficient than repeating the same teaching five separate times. A group setting also allows the nurse to demonstrate food preparation once, answer questions that other mothers may not have thought to ask, and let the mothers learn from each other’s experiences.
Efficiency in public health nursing is judged by how well one contact meets the needs of many clients without sacrificing safety or individualization. Here, all five infants are about
5 months old, healthy, and developmentally similar, so the teaching content is essentially identical. A printed leaflet alone would miss the opportunity for demonstration and clarification; individual home or clinic visits would consume five times the nurse’s time without adding clinical benefit for these well infants.
The complementary feeding context supports why this timing matters. At around
5 months, families begin planning the transition from exclusive milk feeding to
complementary feeding, the period when other foods are introduced alongside breast milk or formula. The evidence base on complementary feeding approaches is still evolving, and caregivers often have questions about what to offer, how much, and how to recognize readiness. A group conference gives the nurse a structured opportunity to address these common questions consistently and correct misconceptions before they become established practices.
| Contact method | Efficiency for this situation | Key limitation |
|---|
| Group conference | Teaches five families at once; allows demonstration and peer learning | Less individualized if a specific infant had a problem |
| Printed leaflet | Low time cost | No demonstration, no opportunity for questions or clarification |
| Home visit to each family | Highly individualized | Repeats identical teaching five times; inefficient when no home assessment is needed |
| Clinic visit per mother–infant pair | Allows individual assessment | Same repetition problem; unnecessary for healthy infants with no growth concern |
Watch out! A home visit would be the better choice if any infant had a feeding difficulty, poor weight gain, or a home environment that affected feeding. The question explicitly states that none of the infants has a feeding or growth problem, so individual assessment is not the priority.
Key point! Group teaching is most efficient when the learning need is shared, the clients are at a similar stage, and no individual clinical problem requires private assessment. The nurse still individualizes within the group by observing each mother’s questions and responses.
The group conference also fits the broader public health principle of using the least intensive contact that safely meets the need. For healthy infants with up-to-date immunizations and no growth concerns, the goal is anticipatory guidance about starting other foods, not clinical intervention.
Teaching once to a small group preserves nursing time for families who genuinely require home visits or clinic follow-up.