Excellent points all around, Winnie.
But there is one factor in the typical hospital hierarchy that adds another roadblock to this goal: the position of Educator.
That requires the RN and a number of years of specialty practice to be accepted into the position of OB Educator, Peds Educator, NICU Educator, and in my hospital, Lactation Educator. If my IBCLC colleague did not have her RN, there would be NO "Lactation Educator" in my hospital. We could teach in Skills Fairs and the like, but we would be under the direction of some other RN Educator in the department. If my colleague worked hard, as you suggest, to remove the RN requirement for her job, she would be "just" a Lactation Consultant. She would lose her position as Lactation Educator, and our education efforts would be under the direction of one of those other RN Educators.
That's a BIG shift in the structure of management.
Phyllis


---- Winnie Mading <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 

=============
   
MOST IMPORTANTLY, as individuals, those of us who are both RN and IBCLC should be in the forefront of this battle.  If we work in a setting that wants us to have both titles, we should be fighting to have job descriptions that do not require both.  Management may see a non-RN IBCLC fighting to have the title recognized independently as doing so for self interest, but when one with both says that the RN part of her background is NOT essential to functioning as an IBCLC, it may be more likely to be heard.  Again, this is not the way it should be, but what the reality is too often today. 
 
--
Phyllis Adamson, BA, IBCLC
Glendale, AZ.
[log in to unmask]

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