Allison in Wisconsin, I feel your pain. I went through just what you went
through, referring patients to providers who said no. Or in our particular
case tended to say "yes, but". Yes there is a slight tie, but the risks of
DOING SURGERY on your baby far outweigh any possible benefits. They would
come back to me bottle feeding and tell me that the doctor told them if it
was still a problem when their baby was one year old the doctor would
reconsider. This was the ENT, a good man with a good reputation.  I tried
to talk to him a few times about a simple revision procedure with no
anesthetic and no stitches but that was very awkward: It really wasn't my
place to tell him how to do his job. So I got Dr. Betty Coryllos to come
give a talk at our monthly "lunch and learn" which the hospital pr
department was pumping some resources into-- a nice catered meal for staff
and physicians, flyers up all around and continuing ed credits for
providers (not sure how that worked but there was a sign-in for
physicians). It was an amazing coup.Betty happens to have a country home
not too far from my hospital (former hospital, I'm no longer with them) and
she agreed to come out of the generosity of her spirit. She brought a power
point loaded with videos of ultrasound swallowing studies that she and her
research partner Cathy Genna had shot and analyzed.
I died a thousand deaths when, as soon as she pushed play on one of her
much hyped vidoes, it froze up on the projection system and we were just
looking at a blank wall with a microsoft logo on it. We tried another
video, same thing. I paged the IT guy. Someone looked at his watch and
left. Then Betty just started talking, she drew on the board and used home
made props she had brought and delivered the material without the videos.
She was wonderful. When the next video didn't work on the projection system
she said, oh just come look! Next thing all the doctors gathered around her
laptop to watch the videos. The speech language pathologists who had showed
up waited their turn. Everybody hung around talking about how fascinating
it was. Betty got in a long discussion with the ENT about releasing
tongue-ties. The local peds listened in.
The doctors decided that tongue-ties caught early should be treated on our
unit before discharge. They set up a system on the unit so that the ENT
could just pop over from his office across the street to perform the
procedure. It was really a wonderful thing -- I've probably even shared
this story with the list before. It felt so good to me to be aligned with
my colleagues, to feel like a member of a team, and all of us just thinking
how we could serve the babies and the families better. I owe a big debt of
gratitude to Betty for that afternoon!

But I tell this story now because, yes an information sheet can be so
valuable, but in this case it took a real-live warm, engaging, experienced
person who happened to be a fellow physician to deliver the message
effectively to other physicians.

Best,
Kristen Panzer, MS IBCLC
upstate NY

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