May 01, 2003

Educator's responsibilities

Today I am in Orange, in the mid west of NSW, to present a “Dynamic Prenatal Education” program for the Regional Health Authority. Thirty educators form the group, and as usual, there is a vast mix if skills from the new recruits to the very experienced. It’s been a fun day, jam packed with ideas, info, activities and sharing and it is great to see the enthusiasm present in the group.

Keeping educators up to date is an important task. I think that employers have a responsibility here but it is also one that the educators themselves must take on too. It is important that those presenting the classes are familiar with the policies of the hospital and the practices of the staff (midwives and doctors). Without this background knowledge it is impossible for educators to fully inform parents of their rights, their options and alternatives and to equip them with appropriate strategies for getting the kind of birth they want.

Negotiating with the system to circumvent the policies they want to impose is a nightmare for most people, and must be even more difficult if the parents are poorly educated, have low levels of literacy or don’t have good English. Even without these barriers, parents are often daunted (even cowed) by the personnel they encounter and succumb to the patient role, blindly accepting the treatments meted out without question.

That’s why the prenatal programs are so important. This is the one chance for parents to really explore these issues and to develop strategies they can use to avoid conflict while negotiating for the care they want. Bringing educators up to speed on these issues can be achieved in various ways, but perhaps the best way is to encourage (require?) them to spend time as a support person in the labour ward so they can feel how things are from the parent’s perspective. It is easy to get a one-sided view when you are an employee, and perhaps feel that your loyalty lies with your employer rather than the parents themselves. If an educator is doing her job properly, she will be fully exploring all the choices on offer (not just those the hospital decides to provide) because without this discussion of all the options, parents will not be making fully informed consent to the care they are receiving.

I have alway as enjoyed the freedom of being an independent educator, employed by the parents to educate them about various birth and parenting possibilities and not by a hospital who wants me to prepare parents for their particular services. My earlier Diary entry (April 24) on preparing parents for coercion highlights the dilemmas facing those who must work within the hospital system. I too have a responsibility to stay up to date with what is happening in the system so I can work effectively with parents, and I rely on the parents themselves to tell me what their experiences have been (plus attending births as often as I can). I always find them very reliable and of course, very real. Checking it out in practice when I am at a birth is an added bonus and another form of reality check.

Posted by andrea at May 01, 2003 08:37 PM

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