I work in a hospital setting as an RN/IBCLC. I get paid as an RN with no financial recognition of my IBCLC qualification. We have around 2250 births a year (and climbing) and have 1.5 FTE for the clinic. Of this, the hospital pays for 1 FTE, and the store we have attached to the clinic pays for the .5 FTE. I can safely say that without the store to help fund the clinic the hospital would have closed us down by now. The store provides the hospital with around CAD$75000 per year. (more than the .5 FTE it is meant to be paying for, but no further hours are being added to the clinic)

We were given the responsibility of following up on all babies who needed to have their MBR's redone post discharge about a year ago, and only recently have they added a .3FTE to our hours, but only on the condition that we continue to do follow up on these babies. (this brings our FTE to 1.8)

The demand for our services is greater than what we are reasonable able to provide, it would be well within reason to expand the hours and staffing of the clinic if funding allowed. Sadly, funding does not allow, breastfeeding remains at the bottom of the barrel and we are simply happy to remain open as hospitals around us continue to close their clinics every time funding for hospitals is cut. 

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