At the hospital, our full-time LC gets shadowed by nurse practioners on a fairly regular basis.  I think that mentoring would be fairly easy in a hospital-based situation, except for the time factor.  Many LCs are pressed to the max right now seeing as many moms as possible.  I suppose if the student was just observing, it would not cut into the time factor very much.  But true mentoring involves a lot more that that and I think that time constraints could be a big problem.  But if you can think and talk fast......

 However, many LCs (and LLLLs) practice outside the hospital setting and actually see moms on a very haphazard and sometimes infrequent schedule.  Not only does this make mentoring difficult, but it also makes it difficult for the LC to keep up her own skill level.  Sometimes many weeks go by without seeing anyone.  Although I only work per diem a few times a month in the hospital, it does guarantee that I do get at least a minimum amount of "hands-on" time with moms and babies.  I have found that the upsurge in hospital-based lactation programs with follow-up from the in-house LCs has led to a definite decrease in my free-lance LC work, both on the telephone and visits.  Admittedly I do not do a lot of solicitation for work as I am too busy already, but just word of mouth was enough to send me a small but steady number of clients in the past.  Have others seen this happening in their areas?

I suppose that mentoring does not need to be based on seeing moms and babies.  You could do a lot of case studies and "what if" situations or do role-playing to practice counseling skills.  There are some very good videos out there that could be used for illustration and instruction.  Part of being an LC is also knowing how to organize your client and information files and manage your business.  But certainly the "hands-on" stuff is very important and would in many cases necessitate that the student be ready to go on a moment's notice, so to speak, in order to see clients.

Before I retire I would very much like to mentor a couple of LCs so that I know that I have passed on my knowledge and experience and also have hopefully left the profession a little richer than when I started - kind of like gardening organically where you enrich the soil as you go along instead of taking away from it.  That will require a real commitment of time and energy and probably mean that other projects or activities will have to be scaled back.  But I think that it would be a wonderful experience.  I think that it would be very similar to sheparding a mom through the Leadership experience in LLL, something else I have not done for a very long time.
Warmly,
Sharon Knorr, BSMT, ASCP, IBCLC
Newark, NY (near Rochester on Lake Ontario)
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