I have been following the developing discussion from my original post, and
feel the need to make some clarifications at least on my own part.

I had the thought of an "LC resident", but that analogy falls short at the
point that Linda Smith mentions--- how many really qualified LC mentors do we
have around?  Lactation Consulting education simply is not developed to the
same degree that medical school is, and so I cannot fully follow that thought
to its logical conclusion.

What I had in mind---- and this is not by any means fully developed---- is
for IBCLC future candidates to be able to sit for a preliminary exam only
after they have obtained X number of educational units.  The purpose of this
is to prove that they have a baseline knowledge of lactation sufficient for
entering a practice period, where the skills are sharpened.  I do not see
this as a fully supervised time period, though that would certainly be the
ideal, because that would effectively  limit the spread of our field to other
 countries.  I was just trying to conceptualize something that would give
some credibility to those working towards the exam so that they even *have*
opportunities to gain experience--- CLE is ok, but it is a certificate of
completion, not a testing of knowledge.  A pre-IBCLC exam administered on an
international basis would give student LCs on differing turfs something to
stand on during their experience processing.  I would love to see this under
the IBLCE banner.  Once the hours have been finished, the candidate could
then sit for the full exam.

I am not a nurse so I can't vouch for the accuracy of all of the following---
but don't nurses generally sit for the boards after nursing school? Sure,
they've done rotations, but they are not by any means experts in any
particular realm of nursing yet.  This seems to be understood.  We are asking
IBCLC candidates, however, to come to the exam with much more experience and
expertise under belt *before* certification. It is hard to gain such
experience, especially with pay, when one has nothing to stand on!  Nurses
get to build their experience *after* passing the boards.  We need some way
to bring some equality and fairness to the process so that becoming IBCLC is
not horridly prohibitive for non-LLL Leaders and non-RNs, especially if we
want our profession to stand on its own and not be an extension of nursing!

I hope that this helps the development of this discussion. With all of our
brilliant minds, surely we can come up with something to make the system work
more equitably for all.

-Lisa Marasco, BA, IBCLC