New York Midwives Lose Right to Deliver Babies at Home
It seems unfair that midwives who have been safely practicing should suddenly have their privileges taken away based on the closure of only one hospital. Where have the obstetricians gone who signed them off before? Better still, why do educated health professionals need another professional to give them the right to practice? It seems a little like a power trip to me. It is extremely frustrating to see a seemingly finished battle be suddenly reopened for these women and their midwives.
It is also frustrating to find out that the OBs are actively fighting against midwifery on the basis that they are 'competition' when there are not enough practitioners to serve all of the women in the first place and besides, shouldn't doctors be putting patient outcomes and healthy deliveries ahead of the bottom line? Apparently not, and it is a similar situation up here in Canada. We as a society have been brainwashed to believe that doctors have only our best interests at heart, and it can be a rude awakening to discover that that is not always the case.
Something to ponder...
Doctors are simply people, with their own motivations and flaws, they are not "angels of health" who can do no wrong, as they are often portrayed to be. It is very unfortunate what has happened here, I only hope they can find some way to resolve it.
ReplyDeleteI like to think that the "profit motivated" doctors that exist in the US, don't here because of universal healthcare, but I'm sure Canada comes with it's own unique set of barriers to midwives, beyond the money issue.
Well the problem is there are two basic ways of paying the doctors...one is to pay them a salary and the other is fee for service. If you pay a salary then they tend to spend more time with fewer patients, which is good for the patients but exacerbates the shortage of physicians. If you pay them fee for service, they squeeze in more patients in less time because they will get paid more that way. But it's not good for the patient because they get less time with the doctor.
ReplyDeleteCan you guess which system we currently use in NB?