Don't call the midwife???
Seen this terrifying letter in the Torygraph?
I've heard of staff shortages, but this APPEARS to be a terrifying confluence of weak management, poor training, institutional problems and a kind of warped feminism ...
Failing midwives
SIR – As a paediatrician specialising in children with disabilities, I am often asked to examine forensically the medical records of children who have died or have severe disability possibly related to events around birth. Often the baby’s heart rate showed obvious signs of worsening distress in labour, yet nothing was done by the midwives to alert the obstetrician until it was too late. The midwives seem to take it as a personal failure if they cannot deliver the baby without medical help. When they are called, junior obstetricians seem to fear they will be accused of medical interference if they intervene.
Numerous parents, junior doctors and medical students have told me that they have heard midwives make derogatory, unprofessional comments about doctors and seen them bully junior obstetricians.
It is often recommended that staff are given more training in the interpretation of fetal heart rate monitoring. But this is to miss the point. We need to start saying the unsayable. Just as we have heard of many recent cases of poor nursing care related to poor attitudes, the same is true on the labour ward. It is the parents who have to bear for the rest of their lives the consequences of having a permanently handicapped child.
Dr Charles Essex
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10441867/Marine-A-must-be-punished-if-we-are-to-respect-the-rule-of-law.html
I've heard of staff shortages, but this APPEARS to be a terrifying confluence of weak management, poor training, institutional problems and a kind of warped feminism ...
Failing midwives
SIR – As a paediatrician specialising in children with disabilities, I am often asked to examine forensically the medical records of children who have died or have severe disability possibly related to events around birth. Often the baby’s heart rate showed obvious signs of worsening distress in labour, yet nothing was done by the midwives to alert the obstetrician until it was too late. The midwives seem to take it as a personal failure if they cannot deliver the baby without medical help. When they are called, junior obstetricians seem to fear they will be accused of medical interference if they intervene.
Numerous parents, junior doctors and medical students have told me that they have heard midwives make derogatory, unprofessional comments about doctors and seen them bully junior obstetricians.
It is often recommended that staff are given more training in the interpretation of fetal heart rate monitoring. But this is to miss the point. We need to start saying the unsayable. Just as we have heard of many recent cases of poor nursing care related to poor attitudes, the same is true on the labour ward. It is the parents who have to bear for the rest of their lives the consequences of having a permanently handicapped child.
Dr Charles Essex
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10441867/Marine-A-must-be-punished-if-we-are-to-respect-the-rule-of-law.html
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