Number of Hospital Beds and JCAHO Just to clarify, JCAHO does not set the standard of what staffing should be. Proffessional organinations do. Currently IBCLC's in Hospital Practice have no staffing guidelines. 2 years ago at ILCA I did an informal survey of 55 participants of the Hospital Special Interest Group ( US participants). On average there were 2.35 IBCLC's per 3393 deliveries per yr. Variables that 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 a year and a hospital with 2.5 IBCLC FTE for 420 deliveries a year. The California Nurses Association and AWHONN have staffing reccomendations for LD and MBU units, that data is what JCAHO and auditing organizations use (the bean counters-the ones that recommend to cut IBCLC positions); What WE can do is join ILCA and your local affiliate encourage them to conduct a national survey on IBCLC's in Hospitals, then we would have meat to practice with. I also gathered information on what we "do" at work it is exhausting and shows clearly what an IBCLC is capable of doing. I also feel strongly that we should also look at how non-US IBCLC's practice in hospitals, this may show things that the US IBCLC"s can do better. So I know I said this before, please join your professional organization which is ILCA. Best Regards Karen Querna, RN, BSN, IBCLC Spokane WA USA *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html