Thank you to Barbara and Kirsten Panzer,
Of the 2000+ members of this list-serve I would love to know how many are members of ILCA-

There is a lot to do - but your membership in ILCA is the only way some of these changes will ever happen - 
for instance we need to have a national survey of Hospital IBCLC's - (I have a draft) so we can begin to set national standards.
(staffing,- IBCLC not RN,IBCLC- workloads, position in the Hospital hierarchy, charting, multiple roles, etc.)
One reason I was laid of from my hosp. position last Sept. was because we have no National Staffing standards like AWHONN and the California Nurses Association. Price Waterhouse requested that information.

Last summer I surveyed about 50 people that attended the Hospital Special Interest Group at ILCA.
On Average there are 2.35 IBCLC's per 3393 deliveries per. year. Variables the skewed the results were that some NICU's and OP services staff IBCLC coverage separately.  The range included one hospital with  1 IBCLC FTE for 7200 Deliveries per year and a hospital that had  2.5 IBLCL FTE for 420 deliveries per year. 

We also have NO outcome data nationally - this type of information is what cost-cutting organizations also need to see. They do not care how happy a mother was. They do not give a rip if she BF's or not. They only thing they most likely know about breastfeeding is the nurse-ins on the news and the innuendos that only extroverts BF. Which as Barbara states may even distract form serious dialog about substantive issues.

The issues that face the IBCLC in the Hospital are addressed repeatedly on this list-serve - but for things to change we NEED more people involved as members to their professional organization - ILCA- Being only involved in your local breastfeeding promotion group is not good enough.


Karen Querna,RN,BSN,IBCLC
Spokane


"It would also be great (and I'm echoing Karen Quena's nice post on this) if 
LCs would join their professional organizations (both locally and 
nationally) so that there would be more money and people-power to draw from 
to engage in sustained lobbying.  It's exciting to get on the news, but for 
many people, nurse-ins are everything they don't like about bfg (because 
they seem to suggest you must be an extrovert to breastfeed) and may even 
distract from serious dialog about substantive issues."




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