Morgan hit the nail on the head as far as I can discern from my limited hospital experiences, both as a volunteer and as a PPLC called in for consultations. The time factor is a huge problem, but so is the counseling skills. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to gracefully help people who lack such skills as they usually believe they are just fine! Perhaps some of this stress on hospital IBCLCs could be eliminated by more IBCLCs getting into taking Pathway F students, who could do a lot of the triage, then work under the direct supervision of their supervising IBCLC for the actual hours. These students can be insured, and if we could convince hospital adminisrators to loosen up a bit, help hospital based IBCLCs that these people (once they take a week or two to train them) could actually make their lives SOOO much easier, we might get somewhere. Many years ago, when I was a hospital bf volunteer collecting hours, the postpartum staff saved the moms who they designated the "needy whiners" for me, because I had the patience and counseling skills for them. I had the time to listen, and then call in the big guns. It worked pretty well for everyone concerned. This is another reason why my imaginary AA degree would include lots of LLL-based counseling skill/HRE type training. It works. Barbara *********************************************** 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