Dr. Kristina Lehman is a Med-Peds doc who specializes in Breastfeeding Medicine, helping new moms and new babies through the struggles of breastfeeding.
Check out all our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you're a med student and you want to be prepared for what's coming, we have a boards podcast coming up for Step 1 and probably Step 2 in the future.
Back to today's episode, Breastfeeding Medicine is one of those fields that really gets down into a "super" niche which is pretty awesome. Kristina is a Med-Peds doc who has taken some further specialty training being a breastfeeding physician.
While the breastfeeding side of her practice only comprises about 25%, still this is worthwhile to talk about as a stand alone podcast. This will give you the information you need if this is something you're interested in. Out of training now for about ten years, Kristina is practicing in an academic setting.
Kristina's interest in breastfeeding sparked when she had her first child. She always knew she would breastfeed and when she had her baby, she thought she had no idea what she was doing.
So she began researching until she just grew more passionate about it. But the turning point for her was when she discovered the Dr.MILK group, a breastfeeding group. MILK stands for Mothers Interested in Lactation Knowledge. She realized there were people out there who actually are pediatricians and lactation consultants.
Before this, her training focus was in internal medicine and pediatrics. She did a med-peds residency. Coming out of it, she wanted to do primary care and she started in an academic setting. She joined the faculty at where she trained to do Med-Peds Primary Care.
Kristina explains that a lot of times, experiential learning comes down from our attendings. Because doctors don't do a great job at breastfeeding, they're not likely to advise their patients well, too. To add to that, there is a lot of formula marketing in pediatric residency. A lot of the AAP stuff is sponsored by these companies.
"We know that doctors don't necessarily do a great job breastfeeding themselves. And that when they don't do a great job, they don't advise their patients very well."
That said, AAP now has a curriculum where they recommend breastfeeding but still it's not widespread. Also, there are a lot of issues with breastfeeding in terms of other specialties telling that infectious disease antibiotics are not compatible with breastfeeding. So when a mom has a complication, she has to stop breastfeeding or pump and dump. Kristina thinks doctors should just really go back to medical school.
Kristina cites the primary things to be a good breastfeeding doc are wanting continuity of care, being a good listener, and wanting to know what's going on. Kristina says the need to integrate and see what's happening to both the baby and the mom. Think about what's going to be best for both of them.
"You can sit there and talk about what's really important for the baby but then that can lead mom to the wayside."
Kristina adds having good problem solving skills is helpful. More importantly, you have to be interested in women and women's health. You shouldn't be afraid of breasts since the breasts are a big part of the practice. She admits there are people that are actually scared of that a lot of times.
Kristina says that are male lactation consultants. It's obviously a female-dominated field. But if you're a guy and you're super interested in helping women then it's like male OB/GYNs. There are a lot of women that see male OB/GYN and
