Comments on: Bad Birthing

By: MacDoctor

MacDoctor — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:56:53 +0000

Interesting, Correen. There are no real surprises in their conclusions as you would expect a birth where the doctor is the LMC to be much more medicalised, including more hospital admissions and fewer vaginal deliveries.
The only odd thing is the claim that women were less likely to experience fetal loss before 24 weeks’ gestation with midwife care. This is very counter-intuitive. I would have expected the rate to be the same. The fact that it isn’t raises a real question as to the randomness of the original allocation of patients.
If these are American trials, I should also point out that their model of “shared” care is more one of a third trimester hand-over from the GP to the midwife rather than the team care I have envisaged in my post.
Lastly, these trails do not address the very real problem of inexperienced midwives operating in isolation. This is the area that gives me most cause for concern.

By: Correen Haslett

Correen Haslett — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:35:00 +0000

In the interest of logical, reasonable, intelligent debate I thought you might like to take a look at some recent research from the Cochrane Collaboration. New Zealand research was included in this study.
http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004667.html

By: mawm

mawm — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:36:28 +0000

We should be ashamed of Midwifery care in New Zealand. We have to wake up and realise that there is an endless number of permenantly damaged women and children as a result of this ignorant, ideologically driven, anti-doctor campaign waged by the ‘College’ of Midwives.

I will acknowledge that there are good and bad midwives, but what is frustrating is the lack of insight as to what they don’t know and what is beyond their capability. Women are so easily mislead when they are ‘encouraged’ to have a homebirth, or encouraged not to have their birth medicalised, to write birth plans not to have pain releif with an epidural before they have experienced the severity of labour pains, all because these modern day witches want to have control over them.

The HDC has made some comment on the standard of care but in all likelyhood is politically restrained from going further. Any doctor who demonstrated incompetence anywhere as bad as shown by some midwives, would be run out of the country.

By: Homepaddock

Homepaddock — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:47:36 +0000

A GP told me she received a call in the middle of the night from a very new mother who had a high temperature. The GP explained she couldn’t do anything, the mother would have to ring her midwife.

The mother said she had but the midwife hadn’t done anything.

The GP rang the midwife who said she’d recently graduated and wasn’t sure what to do.

The GP advised her to get the mother in to hopsital immediately and give her IV anti-biotics.

If as a lay person I understand the seriousness of a temperature in a woman shortly after birth, there is something seriously lacking in the training of a midwife who doesn’t.

Doesn’t look as though the new national policy addresses the problem of inadequate midwifery standards.

By: Plunket line and other winners « Homepaddock

Plunket line and other winners « Homepaddock — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:41:40 +0000

[...] posted on maternity care before this policy was [...]