Marsha's experiences are sadly not rare. It's amazing how hard life makes it for us all to just do our jobs. Marsha's job is to provide current up to date management, support and information regarding breastfeeding and following national healthcare recommendations in regards to infant nutrition. The Med. Directors job is patient management and overseeing unit policies/management and clinical management in accordance with health care standards. The managers jobs are to oversee hospital policies/management. The Vendors jobs are to promote use of their specific product- reqardless of the enviroment at each specific hospital, they just are required to move their product. While Marsha admits she maybe needed to respond to the Medical Director in a calmer manner, sounds like he and the vendor were also less than professional. So is everyone going to apologize and have to work on ways to make this better for everyone or is just Marsha given this homework? My bet is that Marsha will be the only one given this homework. I just find it amazing that vendors- who have nothing to do with patient care,don't work for that facility and only owe loyalty to their own company are given such free reign in our hospitals. It's like a salesman coming to your door and saying you can't own your jeep- you have to own a volvo because thats what he sells. Thanks to LACTNET- when I heard about the gall of one formula company coming into hospitals and pulling their old product and replacing with a new one (with additives that are still under research) and the fact they did this WITHOUT prior approval of dietary,purchasing , management or the physicians permission I was so appalled I went straight to our medical team. Trying to be professional, I submitted the formula companies "research" on these products and then all the other research out there that doesn't support the formulas claims at this time. I asked all our Drs to please review this fully and then we met for a discussion. I'm not saying that the additives are bad- who knows yet? I just asked the Drs. if after reading ALL the information out there, were they comfortable being told that they had no choice but to use this product on every NICU infant or newborn within our facility. Repeating what the rep told me, I told the Drs. that this company had decided that physicians that wished to use their product- especially in the NICU, would have to use the one with additives since the rep stated that all their market line of preterm formulas would all carry the additives and they were discontinuing their availabilty of the older product line. In essence, physicians were being given NO RIGHT to use their medical judgement and decide whether or not this type of feeding was appropriate for their patients. Instead, this company had decided that if a physician wanted to use their product, the comapny would decide on what the product was. Thankfully, my doctors were just as insulted as I was by this marketing blackmail and our rep for that company was told that if they could not supply formula without the additives also, then we would quit using their product entirely. One small sucess- if formula has to be used here- at least the type of formula remains under the direction of the medical care provider- not the formula company. Thanks to you all, we were able to avoid being told how to provide care by salesmen. My father says stupid people are taking over the world- somedays this seems pretty realistic... Lisa J RN CLE IBCLC *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] 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