1.25 L-CERPs

Let’s Get Digital (Let me See Your Baby Balk): Virtual Consult Strategies

Rachel O'Brien, MA, IBCLC, RLC

Opens 11/14/2026

Course description
Stop seeing virtual visits as “better than nothing” and learn how virtual visits can empower families and be as effective than meeting in person! Learn how to set up your platform, protect privacy, and prepare parents for a virtual lactation consult. Learn how to assess for oral function without using your own hands, effective follow up, and workflow strategies.  
Meet the Instructor

Rachel O'Brien, MA, IBCLC, RLC

Rachel is a IBCLC in Massachusetts whose popular blog is a favorite of both families and lactation professionals. Her signature style of humor laced with pragmatic compassion and guilt-free support has resonated with hundreds of thousands of readers and has led to a busy full-time private practice which includes virtual visits with blog readers from across the world.

Before her foray into lactation-land Rachel received her BA in English with a Journalism concentration and then worked in higher education for years. She became an IBCLC in 2015 after completing her Masters degree in lactation, during which she wrote her dissertation on low milk supply. Rachel was a full-time working, breastfeeding and pumping mom for all three of her children and now specializes in low supply, bottle refusal and bottle feeding problems, working parents, and LGBTQ+ families. 

When not working with families you will find Rachel reading lactation books, taking lactation courses, and fervently posting in lactation Facebook groups. Her hobbies include reading, watching drag shows, and staring blankly off into the distance while she wonders what she’s forgetting to do.
Patrick Jones - Course author

Learners say 

This course was succinct and informative. Easy to listen to and packed full of tiny tips and tricks for making every moment count in a virtual visit. 

Aunjrya McTaggart, RN, IBCLC

Rachel was very easy to understand and had a lot of knowledge on the topic of virtual consults.

Jessi Sletten, CLC, PMH-C

Start learning now!

Knowledge Gap
Most lactation professionals learned virtual consulting under emergency conditions in 2020, using whatever platform was available and whatever regulatory latitude was in force at the time. The skills and the compliance posture developed in that period were shaped by circumstances that no longer apply, and a substantial number of practitioners have not revisited either since.

On the clinical side, the persistent assumption is that a virtual visit is an inherently degraded version of an in-person one. Practitioners who hold that view do not develop the specific skills that make remote assessment work: structured camera direction, teaching a parent to perform an oral assessment while the practitioner observes, and remote milk transfer assessment with appropriate attention to scale accuracy.

On the operational side, practitioners frequently run virtual visits on an in-person business model. Virtual visits produce a different follow-up pattern, different documentation requirements, and different scheduling dynamics. A practice that has not accounted for those differences ends up doing substantial unbilled work and concluding that virtual visits are not viable, when what is not viable is the workflow.
Objective

01

Develop a streamlined workflow for virtual lactation visits, including consult structure, charting, and scheduling, and identify the platform and software requirements each step depends on.

02

Assess an infant's oral function and milk transfer remotely, without being present in the room, using structured camera direction and parent-performed assessment.

03

Create a post-visit follow-up strategy that reflects how and why families' needs after a virtual visit differ from their needs after an in-person visit.
IBLCE Content Outline
VII. Clinical Skills

Course Lessons

Annie Frisbie IBCLC Inc has been accepted by the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners® (IBLCE®) as a Preferred Provider for the listed Continuing Education Recognition Points (CERPs) programme. Determination of CERPs eligibility or CERPs Provider status does not imply IBLCE’s endorsement or assessment of education quality. As a Preferred Provider, Annie Frisbie IBCLC Inc attests that it complies with the WHO Code and subsequent WHA resolutions.
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Annie Frisbie IBCLC, Inc actively supports the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions. Therefore, Annie Frisbie IBCLC, Inc is not a company, inclusive of manufacturers, distributors, or marketers, whose products fall within the scope of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (1981) and subsequent World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions (e.g., infant formula, bottles, and teats).

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