In a message dated 97-09-27 00:18:25 EDT, you write: << RUN RIGHT TO YOUR PHONE AND CALL YOUR LOCAL NURSING SCHOOL OR MEDICAL SCHOOL AND OFFER TO TEACH A LECTURE ON BREASTFEEDING! IF YOU DON'T DO IT, NOBODY WILL! >> My daughter graduated (yes, she really did) from a BSN program in May. (She passed her boards -- praise the Lord -- and landed a plum job at Northwestern Memorial in Chicago on the spinal cord ICU!! Praises again!!). Anyway, that's all beside the point -- just a proud mother bragging -- I was privileged to be able to teach a bf segment in her school to all the OB classes (2 a year) for 4 years. I was given 2 hours to race through all the info, practical & philosophical, that I could. It was lots of fun, and I believe made an impact on the students. In fact, at least 4 have asked me how they could become LCs down the road. (NOT, I might point out, my daughter!!) Anyway, the OB and Peds rotations have been truncated to 5, count 'em, five weeks long. The OB book is 1200 (!) pages long....breastfeeding/infant nutrition is one chapter (few pictures), and though the information is not bad (her peds book -- the info was DREADFUL), how on EARTH are these nurses-to-be going to absorb anything about OB in general, and bf in specific in a mere 5 weeks???? Many of the students never even see a birth.... I don't know what they are doing about the bf lecture -- needless to say, they didn't have 2 hours to give me when they dropped it to 5 weeks, but I suspect not much. I do believe the entire lecture time for OB is now about 30 hours, plus two four hour shifts in the hospital a week for 4 weeks. But, as I may have pointed out, boards for nursing now consist of 75 questions to cover 4 years worth of material and the entire nursing curriculum. And the IBLCE exam is 200 questions. Hmmm.... So if you are wondering just why new nurses don't know diddly about bf, the above may be a reason. Many programs will be slightly different than Jill's new one, but I suspect it is the wave of the future. Choke, gasp, sputter -- and BLECH. Jan