The question is posed, by a Baby-Friendly-designation hopeful: "Can we
display,use, or give away any Medela products including any educational
material? I know they are not WHO compliant. We are expanding our employee
pumping room and would like to provide breast pads, wipes, cleaning
supplies, as well as some educational information to our employees and
nursing moms."

My answer would be: No, and it has nothing to do with the [WHO] Code or
Baby-Friendly.  It has to do with conflict of interest analysis.

Any time a healthcare institution or healthcare provider (HCP) gives out
branded samples or flyers about *any* pharmaceutical, medical device, or
 -- for us, in Lactation Land -- equipment and supplies used in
breastfeeding, it is a professional conflict of interest.  We are, as I
like to put it, "bathing the product with the legitimacy of our healthcare
profession" every single time we use a pen with a drug brand, or wear a
lanyard with a pump company name or sip from a vessel with the logo of an
herbal tea emblazoned upon it.

Baby-Friendly requires facilities to respect the Code -- and the long and
the short of that means: buy your formula, and don't take other freebies.
For anything you are using, obtain it in an arms-length, business-like
negotiation and commercial transaction.  And have the pros down in
Materials Managment do the negotiating and buying -- NOT the clinicians who
see patients.

I might add, as a side note: Why in the heck would a hospital, with IBCLCs
on staff no less, rely on a commercial manufacturer of anything to be the
source for materials about healthcare, breastfeeding and expression, given
to employees and patients?  Surely the IBCLCs on staff can come up with a
decent one-pager about BFg management, or safe skin-to-skin, or hands-on
pump use.

Aside from the conflict of interest issues of using manufactuer's info,
this is a golden opportunity for the *hospital* to start marketing itself!
Why give a family something with a company logo on it, when they can have
something with the hospital logo on it?  We know that women tend to drive
healthcare decisions in families ...and women tend to favor hopsitals where
they have had a nice birth experience.  Why would a facility NOT want to
toot its own horn to a person, who has DECADES of decision -making yet to
come, about where to send Johnny for his broken leg, and Grandma for her
glaucoma operation, and Aunt Jane for her gall bladder procedure?



-- 
Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC, FILCA
Wyndmoor, PA, USA

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