Hi All,

My name is Nancy Masaitis and I am an RN/LC at Bess Kaiser Medical
Center in Portland, OR. I will be using my daughter's computer, thus
the embarrassing address. Please excuse this, she has a weird sense of
humor!

I am co-chair of the Breastfeeding Task Force where breastfeeding
policy is set for the Kaiser OR/SW WA Region. The medical education
department publishes a bound journal quarterly. It is sent to all the
physicians in the region. The BFTF is responsible for the Lactation
Update section. We use this as a vehicle for educating our staff on
relevant topics. For example, feed-back that the patients were being
asked to wean prematurly in the dental department prompted a colume on
dental cares.

I teach, with other staff, a 5 day course for care providers (just
finished our third and have educated about 50 Kaiser nurses and
practitioners). I also teach a "Breastfeeding and the Working Mother"
class, monthly. I am the director and work in the Mother Baby Program
(a return visit program for 3-5 day olds and their parents after
discharge from the hospital).  The clinic is open 7 days a week. My
partner and I and several back-up RN's see all primips, primip nursers,
multips with problems and all breastfeeding problems referred to us
from the hospitals or clinics. We are also available by phone to all
the Kaiser members, so we do a conciderable amount of telephone
councelling. Since 80% of our mothers breastfeed, the majority of our
practice is about breastfeeding. We are in the process of starting a
pump rental program as a service to our patients.

I am looking forward to sharing some of my experience and learning more
from the wealth and diversity of experience of the people on the Net. I
went to my first ILCA Conference this summer and was glad to have all
the cutting edge info. to share when I got home. Now maybe I can talk
to some of the people I met at Conference.