A recent post seemed to imply that evidence-based practice means we can only recommend those things that have research evidence. A look at ILCA's paper on evidence-based practice will show that there are several levels, the top being well-controlled and replicated double blind studies, then several other levels of research. The last level is practice that is based on experience. (I don't have the paper with me at this point to get the exact wordings.) It is valid to use the collective experience of our peers as long as we realize that is the basis and there are at this point no well done studies on the issue. As we grow as a profession, we will hopefully have more and more of our practice backed up by research, but in the absence of research in an area, using the experience of experts is valid. And, of course, there are some areas that will never have the randomly assigned double blind type of study. (Can you justify telling one mom she must breastfeed and another that she can't in order to get a true double blind study?!) At this stage of our growth, we would be severely limited in our ability to help moms if we were limited only to those interventions that are backed by "pure" research! Winnie *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html