In a message dated 97-09-27 00:18:25 EDT, you write:

<<  RUN RIGHT TO YOUR PHONE AND CALL YOUR LOCAL NURSING
 SCHOOL OR MEDICAL SCHOOL AND OFFER TO TEACH A LECTURE ON
 BREASTFEEDING!  IF YOU DON'T DO IT, NOBODY WILL! >>

My daughter graduated (yes, she really did) from a BSN program in May.  (She
passed her boards -- praise the Lord -- and landed a plum job at Northwestern
Memorial in Chicago on the spinal cord ICU!!  Praises again!!).  Anyway,
that's all beside the point -- just a proud mother bragging -- I was
privileged to be able to teach a bf segment in her school to all the OB
classes (2 a year) for 4 years.  I was given 2 hours to race through all the
info, practical & philosophical, that I could.  It was lots of fun, and I
believe made an impact on the students.  In fact, at least 4 have asked me
how they could become LCs down the road.  (NOT, I might point out, my
daughter!!)  Anyway, the OB and Peds rotations have been truncated to 5,
count 'em, five weeks long.  The OB book is 1200 (!) pages
long....breastfeeding/infant nutrition is one chapter (few pictures), and
though the information is not bad (her peds book -- the info was DREADFUL),
how on EARTH are these nurses-to-be going to absorb anything about OB in
general, and bf in specific in a mere 5 weeks????  Many of the students never
even see a birth.... I don't know what they are doing about the bf lecture --
needless to say, they didn't have 2 hours to give me when they dropped it to
5 weeks, but I suspect not much.  I do believe the entire lecture time for OB
is now about 30 hours, plus two four hour shifts in the hospital a week for 4
weeks.

But, as I may have pointed out, boards for nursing now consist of 75
questions to cover 4 years worth of material and the entire nursing
curriculum.  And the IBLCE exam is 200 questions.  Hmmm....

So if you are wondering just why new nurses don't know diddly about bf, the
above may be a reason.  Many programs will be slightly different than Jill's
new one, but I suspect it is the wave of the future.

Choke, gasp, sputter -- and BLECH.

Jan