Melissa,
There is no problem obtaining malpractice (professional liability) insurance
on the strength of your IBCLC alone, all you have to do is pay!
        Every field has an identity struggle at first.  As a new profession,
it is our job to educate others about our special skills and training, and
create demand seperate from nursing (the profession).  Our ILCA affilliate
chapter has recommended that IBCLC's who happen to be RN's refuse to perform
nursing functions on LC calls to avoid getting forced to do 2 jobs while being
paid for one, and avoid having LC being subsumed into nursing.  This
recommendation was made in response to some home health care agencies that
wanted only RN IBCLC's so they could pay them the going rate for a short
postpartum nursing visit, and have them do a lactation consult at the same
time.  We all know this is an impossibility, no one can afford to do an LC
visit for the fee for a 15 minute postpartum checkup.  Accepting this kind of
position would be accepting exploitation.
        Some RN LC's will only refer to other RN LC's.  This is very
destructive, because it devalues the IBCLC credential.  Health care knowledge
is helpful as an IBCLC, my education is invaluable to me in this field.  On
the other hand, I have seen many effective LC's without any formal biomedical
training at all.  Let's preserve the strength of this profession, which is
it's diversity.  This gives us a huge pool of skills to draw from, all of
which can prove invaluable in the right situation.   The skills of the nursing
profession per se are largely not applicable to lactation consulting, the
knowlege base is.  There are many ways to obtain this knowlege.  Is anyone
besides Chele Marmet developing a LC major (University course of study)?
(Chele has developed a Master's degree program at Pacific Oaks Univ in
California).  This might be a more rational approach to credibility than all
running out to get RN's, IMHO.
Catherine Watson Genna, IBCLC  NYC  [log in to unmask]