Medication Use While Providing Human Milk

Leslie Southard, a Board Certified Ambulatory Care Pharmacist and Certified Breastfeeding Specialist, works specifically with lactation clients who have chronic and often complex medical conditions requiring medication use. In this course, she teaches you how to provide evidence-based, personalized answers to questions about medication use during lactation — whether you’re fielding those questions on the IBCLC exam or during a consult. Her course includes:

Foundational Concepts

• Accessible explanations of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of medications (molecular weight, half-life, time to peak concentration, oral bioavailability, protein binding, lipid solubility, volume of distribution, and Relative Infant Dose)
• How they relate to safety in lactation
• Key additional parent and infant factors that must be weighed in medication use decisions (age, prematurity, history of use, and more)

Using Key Resources Become confident utilizing the field’s prominent resources for researching the lactation compatibility of individual medications, including Infant Risk, LactMed, E-lactancia.org, and helpful books, journals, and professional guidelines

Specific Medications Detailed discussion of the medications clients are most likely to ask you about, including individual over-the counter and prescription medications and recreational drugs

A Framework for Counseling Above all, Southard stresses that medication use is personal. She provides advice on how to understand your client’s underlying goals and concerns—and how to reflect on your own beliefs and experiences with medication use—so you can provide respectful, client-centered, evidence-based care.