URGENT - Senate Inquiry re: complaints about midwives - closes Thursday

URGENT SENATE ENQUIRY CLOSES THURSDAY 14 APRIL - PLEASE SEND A SUBMISSION

There is currently a major problem occurring with the process of complaints about midwives.

Several midwives around the country have had conditions placed on their registration due to complaints. These complaints are mostly from hospital staff when a labouring woman and her partner are transferring from a homebirth. Most of these restrictions demand that the independent midwife can only practice midwifery within a hospital birthing unit. This brings their homebirth practice to a screaming holt, leaving their women without a care provider and the midwife without an income!


The process as it currently stands is this:

The hospital staff or anyone put in a complaint to the Nursing and Midwifery Board (NMB) about a midwife. The Board meet monthly and decide whether the complaint needs to go to investigation or not. In some cases they’ll decide it doesn’t need an investigation and the conditions will automatically go onto the midwives registration.

If they decide it needs investigating they slap ‘interim conditions’ on the midwives registration. In the case of homebirth midwives the conditions are “Must work only in a hospital and under supervision”.

The investigation then goes to the HCCC and the conditions remain on the midwives registration until the investigation is complete.
Basically, it is a matter of midwives being found guilty until proven innocent.

Investigations can take a year or more. This is leaving many women without a midwife (some are 39 weeks pregnant) and leaving midwives without income – and for some it could be a matter of losing their home, as they cannot pay their mortgage etc.

What needs to be made very clear is that this process of complaints is unfair, unjust and unethical. No conditions should be placed on any midwife until the investigation has taken place. Unless of course it was something incredibly bad like a midwife turning up to a birth intoxicated, sexual abuse – that sort of thing.

We only have 2 days to submit to the inquiry and shake up this disgusting injustice put upon our independent midwives who are brave enough to continue to work in what is now a minefield.

We need your help!!! We need you to have your say at the Senate inquiry into the administration of health practitioner registration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA)

Information about the Inquiry

On 23 March 2011 the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committees for inquiry and report.

Inquiry into the administration of health practitioner registration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA)
Submissions should be received by 14 April 2011. The reporting date is 13 May 2011.

The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online here Parliament of Australia: Senate: Committees: Finance and Public Administration Committee: Inquiry into the administration of health practitioner registration by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA): Information about the Inqui or sent by email to fpa.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details.

You can cut and paste the template below and just forward that on or feel free to cut and paste from anywhere on this email and create your own submission.

We must bombard them. Every submission helps.

The potential for this to happen to any midwife is very real, which then puts many, many women in a position of either being forced into birthing in a hospital or freebirthing.

It is independent midwifery and your freedom of choice that is under attack and it must stop here.

PLEASE circulate this email far and wide and get writing ASAP!

SEE BELOW FOR TEMPLATE SUBMISSION:

With love, respect and gratitude,


Renee Adair
Homebirth Australia
Home Birth Australia |


TEMPLATE


To whom it may concern,


The current situation by which independent midwives are being processed if there has been a complaint against them is totally unacceptable, unfair, unjust and unethical. No conditions should be placed on any midwife before an investigation has taken place.

I have grave concerns that at any time my midwife could find her registration under restriction and this would exclude her from continuing to be my main care provider. This will force me into the hospital system or to choose to free birth.
I request that an urgent review of this process takes place immediately and that some balance be resorted. Midwifery and homebirth is not a crime.


PLEASE SIGN OFF WITH YOUR NAME & POSTAL ADDRESS & CONTACT DETAILS FOR IT TO BE VALID.

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Thanks for the information Kelly. Let's hope this a step toward the system finally being pushed into the 21st centuary.

Done.

Done :)

I'm all for supporting this cause, but I have some concerns over the wording in the template. This line in particular:

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This will force me into the hospital system or to choose to free birth.

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I can so see there being two problems:
1. That we will be instantly dismissed as being anti-hospital, irrational and unbalanced in the other extreme, but our stance is not about being anti-hospital but pro birth choices for women. I think use of positive language rather than negative is always more powerful and influential.

2. I can see the potential for the later part about free birth being used by DOCS or similar against those who sent it, "Endangering their child" blah blah blah. Not saying that that is right at all, but I'd rather word in a way where it couldn't be used against me by some zealot.

Is there a better way of saying the same thing? Perhaps:

"Birth choices are important to women, and they should have the freedom to birth in their homes with a qualified midwife if they chose, respecting their fundemental human right of autonomy over their own bodies."

You can edit it how you see fit. But I think the person who wrote it is trying to get across that they are messing with their choice, and they will have to make a decision they don't want. Women deserve options and the rate in which they are being taken away from us is disgusting. There's no time to provide a weak sided argument for these people, they keep making it worse restricting, restricting.... We're fighting constantly to be able to have the birth we want, not how they tell us it should be.... but its only a template - edit any of it how you see fit.

I never said anything about being passive and making a weak argument! If anything the edit I ended up sending was more in their faces because it was harder to write off. Anyway, done.

:bump:

I edited too yeddi.

I wasn't referring to your comments Yeddi - I think the feeling amongst those of us who have been fighting, writing, protesting, rallying over the years is that something serious needs to be done, what we have available to us now is much less back then, everyone is feeling weary and exhausted, so some feel that confronting words are needed. But the beauty of a submission is that we can all write our own thing. The template is just a guideline to get people started, to help... and I for one only heard about it yesterday, and it closes Thurs.... we have little time!

The small time frame was obviously part of the tactic. Bureaucracy :rolleyes: it's less to do about what is right than what is convenient.

I changed the wording from 'her' to 'their' and so on. Midwives are not all women. ;)

Done! although, like others i did rewrite the template to better reflect our personal situation :)

thanks for linking this Kelly!

You know the complaints and infringements process is the same for all midwives and nurses regardless of where they work and it isn't picking out independent midwives as a means to end their careers just that the restrictions effect them more. Not all independent midwives practice safely and may need reporting just as not all hospital midwives and nurses practice safely either and need reporting as well.

Actually Chicken, specifically because it is NOT the same, we are engaged in this effort....I'm not confused :)

When an independent midwife has conditions put on her registration she is forced to report to work in a hospital or not be allowed to work at all. If you already work in a hospital, your aren't sent home on no pay.

Having explicit familiarity with some of the complaints hospitals - HOSPITALS have brought against midwives (not clients) I can assure you it is a witch hunt intended to target IM's, and not only for the simple fact that they are forced out of employment whilst even the most baseless hysterical work of fiction is investigated. Should they ask for interim jobs at the same hospitals spinning works of fictitious complaints against them?

But I would not advocate that we allow the same system afforded OBGYN's, who even when their actions damage women and babies are allowed to continue practicing, telling NO ONE and settling in confidential law suits so no one ever knows the magnitude of their incompetence. Not a big fan of that either.

There is a middle ground, I would like to find it before I have to seriously consider free birthing in a few months.


Yeddi, I think that wording is fair. Women would be forced to go to hospital or make the choice to free birth. Forced for lack of options or making a choice. It's one of the few times the language has not been upsetting to freebirthers who are usually forced to assume the "people of the worst case scenario and risk" roles. Freebirth is a valid choice for many, but for others it's not, so for lack of choice they ARE forced to go to hospital. No one will free birth that wasn't already inclined to. I think it's good wording. DOCS gets called for such a wide variety if reasons, you might not see it coming no matter where you birth or why. It's sad that such an important public service gets used with disrespect and flippancy by hospitals just to spank "bad" patients. But they do.

:

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You know the complaints and infringements process is the same for all midwives and nurses regardless of where they work and it isn't picking out independent midwives as a means to end their careers just that the restrictions effect them more. Not all independent midwives practice safely and may need reporting just as not all hospital midwives and nurses practice safely either and need reporting as well.

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Hi Little Chicken

I think that is a really excellent point.

Anyone dealing in healthcare should be held to a high standard. Anyone dealing in birth (in or out of hospital) should be beyond reproach. A midwife who practices at home has less backup from colleagues than a midwife who practices in a hospital. You would expect a higher standard of practice from someone who goes it alone. If they can't uphold that higher standard then perhaps its better that they do spend more time in a collaborative environment.