I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this scope of practice was so
defensive as to make our profession superfluous.  It was even stricter than
the guidelines for peer counselors here, actually.  It seemed both archaic
and EXTREMELY culturally bound to the US of A.  If this is all my credential
is good for, it's almost a liability, rather than an asset, and I will have
to think twice before spending good money to recertify by exam in another 4
years.

*Luckily* for me, I work in a country in which IBCLC has no legal meaning
within our health care system, so if IBLCE has a problem with some aspect of
my practice I can just say I was acting as a midwife on that occasion.  I
intend to continue to contradict health care professionals who are just
plain in the dark about breastfeeding, whenever their mistaken beliefs are
detrimental to a mother or baby in their care.  For pete's sake, if WE don't
speak up, who on earth will?

It's all very well to say that people should make their opinions known to
IBLCE, but the board of IBLCE is not elected by the body of all IBCLCs.  It
is selected from the organizations who are members of IBLCE, and there are
stipulations in the by-laws about geographical distribution and about how
many representatives from various professions, as well as consumers, are to
be on it.  This board is under no compulsion even to report to us IBCLCs
about what it does, and there is no mandate for the board members to
represent any given IBCLC.  IBLCE is not our professional organization, but
our licensing body.

What you can, and certainly should do, if you are a member of ILCA, is find
out how this scope of practice was enacted with a representative from ILCA
on the board.  That is more remarkable, IMO.  I don't know who the ILCA rep
is on the IBLCE board, but surely they had some reservations?  At any rate,
they aren't succeeding at doing the job ILCA's members expect them to.  And
it is only through the organization you belong to, who sends a
representative to the IBLCE board, that you have any hope of reaching anyone
who considers themselves accountable to you.  I assume that the ILCA rep was
outvoted, and not simply asleep at the wheel.

Like many of you, I was among the IBCLCs who was asked recently to complete
the online questionnaire about my scope of practice.  Among the myriad
technical and other problems with the questionnaire, it was so heavily
biased for US practitioners that it was not possible for me to fill it in
accurately, and I wrote a lengthy letter to Casey Goldberg at IBLCE about
what I viewed as serious problems with the questionnaire itself.  Still
waiting to hear back on that one.

Rachel Myr
Exasperated in
Kristiansand, Norway 

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