Educating health care providers has been my "specialty" the last
6 years as an LC.  I just finished a really fun project funded by
a local 3-county WIC project.  They hired me to do workshops for
health professionals in the three county area over a 5 month
period.  I would go to the health professional's workplace at a
time convenient to them - i.e. 7am before work, 6 pm after work,
or during lunch hour, or whenever.  I took what time they would
give me and it varied from 1 hour [:-(] to over 2 hours [:-)].  I
surveyed them before the workshop to determine what they most
wanted to learn about and tried to individualize each seminar.  I
always covered benefits of BM/hazards of ABM because I feel that
they are, for the most part, ignorant on the facts of this.  At
the end of my part, the WIC BF coordinator explained what WIC was
doing RE:  BF counseling, pump rentals, how to make referrals,
etc.  We gave each participating facility a "gift" with a CG
flipchart, pamphlets, LS's video, posters, etc.  - all funded by
our local WIC project.

The response was exciting.  Only 5 facilities in the 3 county
area chose not to participate.  (One was the local hospital doing
90% of deliveries :-(.)  But we did reach over 180 health
professionals in 5 months.  Public Health Departments, Clinics,
Hospitals, RNs, RDs, MD, nursing students, family practice
residents.  Scores on evaluations for meeting objectives were
very high and 70% to 100% wanted more inservices in the future.
I also did 3 month follow-up survey for the earlier workshop
participants and found that they are referring more, using the
resources gifts, teaching/counseling their clients differently
and in general still very positive about the workshops.  I am
pursuing contracts with 2 other nearby WIC projects to see if
they would fund a similar project in their areas.

I've been toying with the idea of publishing our final report in
JHL.  Does anyone know how intensive and time consuming that
would be?  I have the final report and documents on disc.  We did
have a poster session at the WI Public Health Association State
Convention in June.

Finally, I thought you might be interested in a project in the
works by the WI State BF Coalition.  I am on the Professional
Education Committee.  We are currently in the process of
surveying colleges and residency programs of nurses, dietitians
and physicians in WI to see what BF Education is in their
curriculum (if anything), when it is taught, by whom, content and
number of hours taught, any clinical experiences RE:  BF, and
what their perceived needs are.  Our survey goes out in September
and the preliminary results should be tallied by December.  Our
long range goals are to develop or provide a curriculum and/or
speaker's bureau as a resource to these centers of education.
Anyone who would be willing to share a curriculum, we would love
to see it and give proper credit if used.  We are already aware
of the San Diego curriculum.  I'm a person who hates to reinvent
the wheel and am more than willing to share what we have and will
have in the future.  Anyone else?

Will keep you updated.  Theresa Gutsch, MS, RD, CLE, Wausau, W
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