December 05, 2003

A policy for everything....

Today I began a two day workshop for the staff at Sutherland Hospital. A small but dynamic group which includes some students and prospective students - now that’s encouraging!

The issue of water births came up and it transpired that at this unit they are not “allowed” to do waterbirths because they have no “policy”. However, if a woman is in the bath and wants to stay there, they are to facilitate the birth, even if it means a waterbirth occurs. Unofficially water birth accidents are occurring, but this is far from satisfactory.

The need to have a policy for everything that happens in a hospital is depressing - there goes the spontaneity, the individuality and unless we are careful, the woman centred care. This is not unique to Sutherland, let me hasten to add - I have encountered these restrictions in many units, both here and overseas. It is impossible to have a policy for everything that a woman may want to do in labour - this is like trying to lay down guidelines for people to follow for every act in their daily lives. If hospital administrations think they can protect themselves legally through this requirement, they may find, in the end, that this is a false hope, especially if a woman decides to sue because a policy was discriminatory or unduly restrictive of her rights and freedoms.

Common sense has almost disappeared from maternity units in western countries (it is not a problem in most of the world, where expediency and practicality usually govern what is possible, rather than legal niceties). I must start compiling a list of ridiculous strictures being put on healthy, educated, thinking adults that find themselves in maternity units - it will make for entertaining reading one day!

Meanwhile, it seems that Sutherland is not the only unit that has the baths but not the policies that enable women to freely utilise water for the birth of their baby should they so wish. I’ll have to organise some in-service programs to get the staff up to speed on this issue, which seems to have fallen into a hole. It seems that administrations are slow to get organised and women, meanwhile, may be missing out.

Posted by andrea at December 05, 2003 05:38 PM

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