Saturday, March 22, 2008

To recertify or not recertify......that is the question.

I am trying to decide whether or not to renew my Lamaze certification. It is due in June and right now I am VERY short the required number of CEU's.
Unfortunately, all of the CEU's that I have for my nursing license will not qualify for Lamaze. Over the past couple of years I have take a two AWHONN fetal monitoring courses, STABLES, AWHONN local conferences, all my recerts for ACLS and NRP, and the monthly lunch and learns and mini-conferences put on by the hospital (none of which are normal birth related) that I don't have the resources, time and energy to find normal birth stuff to do.
If I could just pay a fee to recert, I would. It's the CEU's that are killing me, in this area anything normal birth related is pretty much impossible to find, except for the classes I teach.

Unfortunately, I am the only Lamaze certified educator still actively teaching in my city, and I only teach at one facility one night per week. So, I feel that pressure to recert to be able to provide those classes to women who want them. There are a couple of other teachers who will fill in for me if I need but no longer want to teach their own classes. Sadly, there is a certain hostility towards Lamaze by some docs in certain positions in this area. And these docs have made it so difficult to teach they have basically run all of the other teachers off. Therefore, I have had zero luck in convincing anyone I work with or know to look at becoming a Lamaze instructor.
Really, I am feeling pressure both ways. All of my students encourage me to keep teaching and refer others to my classes and I feel the pressure to provide this service to the community. On the other hand, I only teach one night per week because of work, graduate school and I still have young kids and don't want to miss out on their activities. Unfortunately, I see myself teaching less and less the farther I get along in school. Then, when I go into practice I don't see myself wanting to teach classes in the evening after I have been in the office all day.

I think I may recert this year since it is good for three years and re-evaluate once I am out of school and the recert time comes up again. The problem now is finding the CEU's!!!!!! Any suggestions?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

is it hard to recertify? if not i would do it just incase later on you want to continue to do lamaze, i totally understand you wanting to spend more time with your kids , how long is the class you give? maybe you can make it shorter?
i just have a question, why have doctors made it harder for lamaze techers to practice?
by the way i stumbelled on her, while looking for wasy to become a lamaze instructor myself. i'm a stay at home mum of 4 and i just love everything that has to do with pregnancy and childbirth.