Hi Rosemarie I am a former peds nurse and NICU nurse now teaching in the school of nursing at University of Ottawa and sharing my time with the child and adolescent directorate at our local health department. Primarily working with new mothers and babes, home visiting, telephone counselling, counselling at breastfeeding drop-ins and teaching prenatal, early parenting and breastfeeding classes, I also do some private LC work. As a result of listening to what women were saying over the years about inconsistent, and wrong breastfeeding advice and seeing the results of such advice, I and some colleagues wrote a proposal to Health Canada. We were funded to develop and pilot a credit course at the university, funding included sending out the course across Canada to all schools of nursing. We also must evaluate the effects of the course over the next three years. Initially the pre/post test results demonstrated all three groups i.e. generic students who had had their OBS experience, postpartum nurses and non-postpartum nurses all significantly increased their attitude and knowledge about breastfeeding. The students who had only recently studied OBS fared the worst in the pre-test, but in the post test did equally well to the other groups and this was also demonstrated in practice too. It showed correct knowledge is more important than having had a child or having breast fed not surprisingly. I have been having a difficult time getting volunteers to participate in the long term comparison group, it is a little threatening. However, yesterday I visited one of our local hospitals and the head nurse coraled ?sp. about ten ?volunteers. One or two older highly opinionated nurses knew the correct responses to some of the questions, but did not agree with it, I told them I want to know what you think, don't give me the answer you think I want. One became really upset about the question related to higher IQ for breastfed babies she did not care about any research done (she had not read it). She felt this was a direct put down to bottle feeding mothers (she incidentally had been bottle fed!) She says she supports breastfeeding but everyone is putting down the bottle feeding mothers, her perception. I found it very interesting because I do not think nurses give bottle feeding mothers a hard time, but I think it really demonstrates the belief system and how firmly entrenched it is. Now this hospital happens to have had six nurses who have taken my course and they are in the process of preparing to certify all staff working with breastfeeding mothers, so I suspect some feel a little threatened. I think it is a good illustration though of how desperately we do need to educate professionals early in their careers in order to change attitudes and hopefully beliefs before they get too entrenched. Hope you find this helpful. Susan Moxley IBCLC [log in to unmask]