Midwives announce plan to ignore coroner's recommendations
According to the Gazette:Quebec's midwives are planning no changes in the short term to the way they deliver babies, despite a coroner's report that calls for an overhaul of their practice.I can't imagine why the midwives' organization would hold a press conference to insist that they are not going to implement the recommendations. It makes them look defensive and is very insensitive to the parents who lost their child. Interestingly, the president of the Quebec Order of Midwives could not or would not reveal the number of deaths that have occured under midwifery care. It is completely inappropriate to withhold that information.
Coroner Paul Dionne recommended the Quebec Order of Midwives significantly improve the training of midwifery to respond better to high-risk births after what he described as the "preventable" death of a baby boy in Montreal last year...
Dominique Porret, president of the Quebec Order of Midwives, insisted yesterday there is no need to follow the coroner's recommendations because they are already in place...
"It's not that we haven't responded to the recommendations," she added, after being grilled by reporters at a news conference on what the Order intends to do in light of the report.
"Nothing will change, in the sense that we are already doing our very best to ensure the safety of mothers, babies and their families..."
Last year, midwives delivered 1,453 babies, and no complaints were lodged with the Order. Porret said there were a few stillbirths - comparable to the rate in hospitals - but could not give a number.
Labels: midwifery, neonatal mortality
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