Hi all,
Remember there are several pathways to become eligible to sit the exam. I
believe there are 4 components to qualifying status: 1) requirements for
college degrees (or comparable "schooling") which serves to ensure the
candidate has a basic science, humanities, etc foundation. The degree can be
in any number of disciplines. 2) There are requirements for c.e. hours in
the recent past, which have to be on lactation, and serves to ensure the
candidate has up to date lactation knowledge; 3) there are requirements for
counseling hours which serves to ensure the candidate has "real experience
with real mothers/babies" and 4) there is the requirement of having
recommendations from one's peers or superiors. Most of these requirements
are being "tweaked" and more specifically delineated. That is to say, there
is more specific didactic coursework being laid out to fit criteria #1,
there is or will be more specific lactation topics that need to be addressed
in the c.e. requirement to fit with the exam blueprint, and the counseling
hours may need to be mentored and specifically logged.
Not sure how to put this without being offensive: this is to try to prevent
say, someone who has a degree in accounting and runs a pump rental depot
(not saying this is necessarily someone who should not sit for exam) and has
taken one 3 day breastfeeding c.e. program, to then sit the exam, counting
her pump rental business as hours toward counseling. This really could be
done, or at least in the past, and certainly that person may be very
experienced and make quite a good LC. But being more specific in
requirements etc will make the pathway better at assuring we are getting
capable candidates. Re the LLL hours: the 5 years should serve to ensure
that those with high volume or those with low volume of contacts still have
enough counseling hours (along with the other 3 requirements) to take the
exam. If a LLLL is doing really high volume of contacts, she could log them,
and conceivably meet the requirement of counseling hours sooner than 5 yrs,
say in 3 years. Nurses do the same thing. They probably have not
specifically logged all of their hours of counseling bf moms. So they
estimate as best they can the amount of hours they spend working with bf
moms and they take the no. of years they have been doing that and come up
with their hours, signed off by a supervisor who affirms they are being
truthful. This is my understanding of the process. Until we have a
university or other structured program to LCdom, this is the best system we
have, altho I think we can all admit it is not perfect.
Someone from iblce please chime in.
Laurie Wheeler, IBCLC, MN, RN
New Orleans Louisiana, s.e. USA
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