Thank you Angela.  I have always wondered why hospitals exclude IBCLCs in favor of RN IBCLCs.  The answer I've often been given is that then hospitals can pull those nurses off lactation consulting if necessary and put them on RN duties.  I don't know if that is true or not but that's what I've heard.  If that is so, isn't it possible that keeping personnel who can ONLY do breastfeeding might result in more mothers served?  Maybe I'm missing something there; I have been wrong before.  But like you I fail to see how non-RN IBCLCs would degrade the services.

Also I was told that my doing PP work might be useful to the outsourcing company because of plans to start a program providing home visits after discharge.  A program that runs at a lower expense can sometimes afford more personnel and allow them to do more, no?  At the very least they seem to be thinking about the needs of mothers in some small way.

I cannot pretend that I understand hospital culture or the politics in all of this or what the result will be.  I most definitely don't.  But we can lay to rest the fear that imposter "lactation consultants" will be taking over UMass.  If anyone knows how to talk to mothers who might be iffy about breastfeeding-- and that would seem to be the demographic at a hospital that bosts 4,500 births a year but has a <40% breastfeeding rate on discharge-- it would be us WIC alumni.  At least that is my humble opinion.  

If I am completely off-base on any of this I apologize; again I am green as all get out and almost certainly biased at this point!

Erin Michaud, IBCLC

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