I second Pierrette Mimi Poinsett's thoughts about MD training.  When I was
on faculty at a medical school, I was told it would not be possible to get
anything having to do with lactation into the med students' curriculum.  I
asked anyway.  The result?  I was given 75 minutes with these students (3rd
year) during their OB rotations.  Enough time? Of course not.  Boy, did I
have to talk fast to get even the most basic material across.  However, the
questions were always enlightening and I hope that at the very least, I
piqued their curiosity to learn more (to do this, I often threw out obscure
facts that I knew was not covered in their textbooks--like adopitve nursing
moms making milk without being pregnant, etc.)

Unfortunately, when I left, those opportunities were not continued.  But,
at more and more med schools, SOMETHING about lactation is being taught
other than that the breast is just another site for cancer.

Each of us has a role to play here. If you have contacts at a medical
school or nursing school, or midwifery school or whatever, ask questions
about the kind of training these professionals-soon-to-be are receiving
about lactation and breastfeeding.  If they are going to be responsible for
providing care for mothers and babies, they NEED this information. If they
are not getting it now, ask how you might help them to get it tomorrow!  (I
am not suggesting you offer yourself as a financial sacrifice on the altar
of expected largesse from volunteers (if I may borrow a phrase from Jack
Newman, slightly revised).  But do offer something--some time, perhaps, one
free lecture, after which you expect to be paid, just like ALL THE OTHER
CONSULTANTS who are paid, and so on.

If we are going to complain about what is NOT known, I believe we have a
responsibility to offer knowledge about what IS known in order that it
might be learned by others....

Eternally optomistic that things will get better, if we just keep plugging
away....

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"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.telcomplus.com/~kga/lactation.html
LACTNET archives http://library.ummed.edu/lsv/archives/lactnet.html