The other day, I found a link to this article on webCT. Reading stuff like this makes me feel sad and angry. It also makes me feel thankful that I live in Ontario, am being educated here, and plan to practice here. Here, where any woman can access midwifery care and can choose her place of birth. Here, where midwives can practice autonomously without being under the control of an obstetrician. I am thankful that our system of publicly funded health care helps to make this all possible.
posted by Jill at 6:45 pm
5 Comments:
Couldn't get your link to work, but...
There's exciting stuff going on here in Kingston whereby the midwives might get much more autonomy when attending births at KGH. It's true they don't need to be under the control of an OB, but they do need to be under the control of the hospital where they have admitting privileges. And KGH is one of the worst. But they are working on changing that! They might even be removing the cap on the number of births midwives are allowed to do here! YES!
And hurray for midwives! And the freedom we have to access them. I am eternally grateful for the birth experiences I have been able to have because of that.
Hmm, not sure why the link's not working for you. It works for me.
That's awesome about what's happening in Kingston! And it's true that midwives here must work under their hospital's guidelines. The article is about New York, where midwives cannot legally practice without being approved by an ob or hospital. The one hospital that approved them went bankrupt and shut its doors. I guess what I meant was that here, midwives can practice even without hospital privileges, and they don't need to be underwritten by an ob.
I'll send you the link on fb.
So, without hospital privileges, can they only do homebirths?
And, now that I think about it some more, would needing to transfer to a hospital be a hassle without admitting privileges? Would care automatically then be transfered to an OB?
I'm not entirely sure how it works without hospital privileges. I do know that our one instructor was being given a run-around and did not yet have privileges. She still did hospital births, but maybe not as primary? Maybe it meant a transfer?
I'm also thinking of a story I heard where a midwife from Manitoulin had to bring her client to the Sudbury hospital (for a reason I can't remember), and the doctors let her remain as primary caregiver, as a kind of courtesy.
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