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Subject:
From:
Barbara Wilson-Clay <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 25 Feb 2002 08:55:54 -0600
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I hope I qualify as someone who has aspired to serve as a change agent and
who has struggled with practice ethics in a capitalist country with no
national health insurance.

That said, I want to remind everyone that the word 'Consultant' appears in
my credentials.  If I am going to be able to stay in this profession (since
I am not married to a rich man) I have to work for pay.  While I have
maintained my LLL leader status for 20 years to support their work, and
while my efforts in many arenas (like the Milk Bank and ILCA task forces on
behalf of the profession and on behalf of working mothers) are strickly
volunteer, I am a working woman myself.  I do want to strive to earn my pay
ethically, but some of the comments I've read on this thread are so limiting
in terms of defining ethical employment parameters that I wonder how any of
us would be able to continue to work in this field.  If you can't sell
anything, or work in a ginger bread house, or consult with corportations
that make creams or bottles, and if you can't charge and can't get
reimbursed enough to compensate you for your two hour visits and your
endless ph. follow-up, just how in the heck can you stay in this work?

I took a contract job with Medela to help re-write some of their web page
info.  I don't have control over all their content because I'm not that
important.  They make bottles and nipple shields.  I use bottles and nipple
shields.  I wish I had better bottles and nipple shields to work with as
therapeutic tools.  I find it incomprehensible that feeding specialists are
so generally ignorant of how these tools work.  I get paid to consult on
educational materials and I'm real glad to get paid for this work because
last week I did three paid consults.  We have a recession going on and
Austin has been hard hit.  Spending on discretionary health care is the
first casualty of that.  So I figure I have only a few choices.  Do
consulting work and diversfy or go back to teaching high school.  I bet
there are others in my situation who I think the field would suffer from
losing.

To some extent this discussion still misses a huge point which is that it
pits volunteers and those among us who are subsidized by our husband's
incomes with those who need a paycheck and are trying to stay in and
continue to help shape a very fledgling profession.  This is not to say all
of us shouldn't support the CODE (I helped write IBLCE's ethics policy) or
that we shouldn't discuss what constitutes ethical practice.  It is to say
that if we create a witch hunt atmosphere that makes it impossible for
anyone to work professionally because nothing is pure enough, no one will be
left but the volunteers.


Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
http://www.lactnews.com

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