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




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