It would be of great benefit to the image of our profession if all LC's were adequately trained, educated, qualified, motivated, dedicated, and fully up-to-date as soon as they are certified, and thereafter. Any time one of our profession misses a problem, or is impatient with a client, or is too busy to adequately assess a situation, or acts without current knowledge, or makes a poorly considered statement we all look less credible. There *is* a "large gap of knowledge" in our LC profession. Our MD's have the same problem, of course, as do OT's, teachers, nurses, RD's or any professional. We all cringe when one of "us" comes over looking inadequate, because it causes people to doubt all of us. Some of the problem may be due to lack of training or nebulous requirements of LC's, but we can see that the requirements for the above professionals can be quite exacting and strenuous and folks can still not learn what needs to be known and not practice it if they did learn it. I'll bet we all know someone in those professions who seems to have evaded all of the education or participatory experiences required for their certification. Poor performance isn't necessarily indicative of inadequate requirements for certification. I have personally had experience in dealing with each of the above professions and have shaken my head in disbelief on occasion at comments or treatments coming from such highly trained professionals. Perhaps you have too. And Carol, you may have had occasion to wish all of the volunteers in your organization were equally sensitive and current in their knowledge base. There may be a large gap in the expertise in your group too. That's just the way it is. None of us likes it though. We *are* the new kids on the block and we are working hard to gain respect, but that respect will be built one step at a time. We do need to do what we can to fine tune our certification process; we are still learning. But even if we model after the most arduous certification process in the world we will still have people who do inadequate jobs. You can have two people in training for certification in any of the professions mentioned above and one will go on to do a shameful job every day and the other will shine in her/his community as bettering human kind. That's just the way it is. Patricia Gima, IBCLC Milwaukee mailto:[log in to unmask]