Here’s the latest story of the progress of the review in the paper today.
MIDWIVES are calling for an overhaul of maternity services, arguing they could provide better care to mothers if they did not always need the approval of a doctor. Midwives at present have restrictions on their practice in areas such as prescribing medicines, ordering tests and admitting patients to hospitals.
However the Australian College of Midwives, in a submission to the Federal Government’s National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, has called for greater rights. These include limited prescribing rights, the authority to order and interpret tests, professional indemnity and visiting access to hospitals. The College has also criticised Australia’s maternity services for not being focused enough on women and their families. “Early discharge from hospital is rarely followed up with home visiting by a midwife or doctor,” it says. Fewer than 5 per cent of women can access continuity of care by a known midwife, it says, and care is “highly fragmented”. “Most women encounter more than 20 different carers during the eight to 10 months of their maternity care” it says. The College also criticises care for being “highly medicalised”, with the rates of Caesarean section in Australia “unnecessarily high and rising”.
The submission follows statements by Health Minister Nicola Roxon that she would like to see a greater role for allied health professionals in the health system.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has backed comments by his families spokesman, Tony Abbott, on a government-funded paid maternity leave scheme. Mr Abbott has raised concerns that a paid parental leave model favours working mums over stay-at-home mums. Mr Turnbull yesterday said he was supportive of equal payments for both working and non-working mothers, saying all mothers should be treated equitably
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Now that is interesting. The CNM’s I work with don’t seem to have any restrictions on them. They write all their own scripts and have admitting privedges. The only time I see them run stuff by the Doc is if they think they need a vaccume or a c-section. Midwifes are going to have to be independent in the future because OB’s are becoming scarce real quick.