I am observing a transition in Lactation Consulting that is occurring with
some but not all who are in Lactation...
Some have been volunteers - and just as I did - have trouble charging for
services the thought they once provided for free - but in fact, the
services you now provide go way beyond the Leader or Peer Counselor - IF
you are doing them at a professional level - charting, insurance,
maintaining updates, communicating with other providers, follow-up and
keeping records, buying and maintaining equipment...  all this is different
from volunteer work - or should be.
Problems come when people DON't totally transition and just offer a "higher
level" of volunteer work...  It makes it sound as if other Leaders are not
"good enough" (which is totally incorrect as the Leader does HER job just
fine...she is NOT a professional and never claimed to be...), or that this
position is just an expensive hobby.
In fact, my transition was easier because I moved away from the area that
knew me as a Leader - so I was viewed as an LC first - then they found out
I was ALSO a Leader (answer e-mails for LLLI in Spanish, help with a group
when needed, etc.)
But it is not just the volunteers that have troubles with transition...I am
observing this also among nurses and nutritionists who think of the IBCLC
as an "addition" to their already over-full job and work.  They, also,
resent the "extra" expense of ILCA membership, maintaining credentialing,
etc.  Nurses I work with resent having to use their personal time to take
conferences and trainings related to their job -whether information on
immunizations, on AIDS, on SIDS or on breastfeeding.  They feel their
employer should pay for it all!  I, on the other hand, have never had an
employer pay for my Lactation training (until recently when my supervisor
realized I had been doing so and offered to at least cover some costs of
trainings within California), so I assumed that was what you did - I paid
for my Social Work degree, my RN, my Public Health Nursing...what was
different now?
What I do is NOT a hobby, is NOT volunteer work, and requires a great deal
of self-discipline and continually increasing my knowledge not only of
lactation, but of research, of writing, etc.  I have spent the last 5 days
working in Excel trying to analyze breastfeeding data!  That is part of our
work too - develop baselines, develop goals, develop ways of evaluating our
effectiveness - to avoid the "definition of insanity: trying the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results"...
Sorry this sounds like a diatribe - I've been reading similar messages both
in Lactnet and IBCLC2B - and the words just flew out....now I'll probably
send this to myself and not mail it at all...

Jeanette Panchula, BSW, RN, PHN, IBCLC
NEW E-mail: mailto:[log in to unmask]

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