Talk:Lactation consultant

This is a certification, not a medical degree with years of training. The inclusion of the line, "An International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) will have the initials IBCLC and/or RLC after her/his name, as a physician would have MD or DO, or a registered nurse would have RN" in the article serves only to attempt to make the profession appear equivalent to a degreed profession. There's no need for this line, otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.202.255.174 (talk) 15:42, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I've removed those examples. The text is clear without them. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs)

False information based on unreliable sources

The very first sentence of the "history" section says the profession was "was founded by a group of La Leche League Leaders who wanted to professionalize the skills they had developed [...]". One of the sources is LLLI. That source states that "early in 1982, the LLLI Board mandated the establishment of a lactation consultant program". That's not the origin of the profession. The Breastfeeding Sourcebook states that already in 1981 an apparently unrelated "nonprofit teaching and consulting firm" was founded that had "a staff of lactation consultants who conduct professional [...] Lactation Consultant Training Programs". So the LLLI, which I doubt meets Wikipedia's standards of reliability, is incorrect in claiming they founded the profession. Similarly, I wouldn't trust what IBLCE says; they don't meet Wikipedia's standards of reliability either and are similarly likely to over-emphasize their own importance. Huon (talk) 01:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the sourcing, but the wording in the article was sloppy. The sources (both the LLLI and Ruth Lawrence's medical textbook) say that people from the LLLI founded the IBLCE. The sources do not claim that people from the LLLI founded the profession. A profession generally exists before a certifying body for it is established. I've adjusted the wording in the article accordingly. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:09, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

W.r.t. IBLCE as a source, we evaluate the reliability of a source in relation to the specific article content that is referencing it. What exactly is the content that you are questioning? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:40, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

See WP:NPOV. Basing the article on the IBLCE's writings is likely to over-emphasize the significance of the IBLCE within the profession. And precisely the importance of the IBLCE and of the LLLI within the IBLCE is what we cite the IBCLE and LLLI for. Huon (talk) 23:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

You seem to be saying that the article might not give enough attention to lactation consultants who are not IBLCE-certified, and that the article might overstate the importance of the IBCLE within the profession. Am I understanding your point of view? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:40, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

The "History" section focuses exclusively on the IBLCE. It would be more suitable as the history section of an article on the IBLCE, and the article does its best to conflate lactation consultants with the IBLCE. We know that there's a pre-IBLCE history of lactation consultants and that, likely, there's some history beyond that organization. An explanation of the IBLCE's role within the profession might be relevant here, but we won't get a neutral summary of that out of the IBLCE itself. Huon (talk) 16:56, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Sure, it's always good to use a wider variety of sources. Nobody disagrees that using more sources would improve the article. What sources do you suggest?

It's technically incorrect to conflate lactation consultants with the IBLCE, but as far as I know from reading a variety of sources about breastfeeding, the IBLCE is the only certifying body for lactation consultants and a very, very big aspect of the profession. People who do this kind of work who are not IBCLCs tend to call themselves lactation counsellors or breastfeeding counsellors. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)