Obstetricians “Pick up the Pieces” After Midwives are Finished says OB in Canada
By Danell Swim
April 29, 2008
Some doctors are “vehemently opposed” to midwives delivering babies at Belleville General Hospital, says a local doctor.
The physician, who agreed to be interviewed on condition his name not be used, said two obstetricians have threatened to quit if midwives are allowed to conduct deliveries.
“It’s going to complicate the environment we work in,” he said, by taking “time, energy and resources” from the maternity department. “There is going to be a cost and a hassle.”
Midwives were approved by the Ontario Ministry of Health in 1994 to deliver babies and the Quinte Midwives Clinic on Church Street in Belleville was opened on October 2006 with government money.
Midwives take four years of university to earn a bachelor of health science degree in midwifery and are regulated health professionals under the Ontario College of Midwives.
But they are still on the outside looking in at QHC.
Jeannette Davies, a midwife at the Belleville clinic, dismissed the suggestion that midwives would increase demands on manpower at hospital maternity wards.
There are two midwives at a routine birth and no nurse or doctor is used.
“Midwifery clients use less resources in the hospital,” Davies said. “We are not a drain.”
Laughton agreed the Quinte midwives have been patient with QHC.
“We are in dialogue with the midwives and we know they are frustrated,” he said. “The obstetricians still have some concerns at this point,” he said, adding that one of them is the “complexity of the floor,” Quinte 7, which is the maternity ward.
No further explanation was given.
“I can’t go farther than that,” he said.
Midwives only deliver babies brought to term by healthy women, and if there is any complication the women are referred to a doctor from the start, Davies said.
But the doctor said when midwives have problems with deliveries, it is the obstetrician “who picks up the pieces” with no choice of being able to say no.
“Responsibility without privilege, that’s the definition of tyranny,” he said.
He added that physicians must go through a “rigorous process to get hospital privileges” whereas a midwife would not have to be subjected to that amount of scrutiny.
“This has become a political thing,” he said.
“It’s being rammed down the obstetricians’ throats.”
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3 Responses to “Obstetricians “Pick up the Pieces” After Midwives are Finished says OB in Canada”
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“Responsibility without privilege, that’s the definition of tyranny”
WHAT?? I think refusal accept responsibility without the added perk of privilege is self-serving. God forbid an obstetrician should actually DO HIS JOB and attend women when they need it, not just when he wants the money or the prestige.
I’m confused - if midwives are experts in normal birth, and refer to experts in complicated birth when the birth, ya know, becomes complicated - where is the issue here? Is it because the obs don’t get to pick and choose who their clients are?
I’m confused as well. Midwives consult the way family docs do. If something goes outside their scope of practice — like hypertension, for example — they consult. These woman would also have a consultation if they were with their family doc. Midwives actually get far more training in obstetrics than family physicans do. So… do OBs also complain about the other women they see when they’re on call, who come from other community care providers?