Let’s do something
SIR,
The Rudd government has recently announced its intention to create a national maternity services plan.
In preparation they have produced a discussion paper: Improving Maternity Services in Australia.
This is hot on the heals of the National Consensus Framework for Rural Maternity Services released in 2007.
And you guessed it!
After the round table forum in Canberra they are going to conduct a national review of maternity services.
Can you believe, after the amount of reviews conducted on the Bega Valley Maternity Services, that the government is now going to review us all over again?
I thought that being federal the focus may be different, but from the look of the discussion paper it is rehashing the same old information that we in birthing circles all know and love.
It even includes the National Maternity Action Plan, a document produced and promoted by the Maternity Coalition since 2003.
Reviews, reviews, recommendations, recommendations… please when are we going to get some implementation?
How many documents do we need to produce and how much money should be wasted before somebody actually rolls up their sleeves and makes some change?
It all reminds me of the laggard who buys an exercise bike to get into shape and then leaves it in the shed for years.
Don’t leave our reviews in the shed.
Get on your bike GSAHS and give us a better choice of maternity care.
We need the maternity services review to be released and the findings to be implemented.
The problems in the Bega Valley are not all GSAHS; they are multifaceted and there are divisions in the community.
We need to unite and work together.
This is our opportunity to get it right.
This is our chance to get a safe and sustainable women centred service that will attract both birthing women and maternity staff to the Valley. Come on, get on the positive side of change.
The care of our women and babies are what’s important, all the other issues are an aside.
Make comments for the national maternity services plan at maternity.services.review@health.gov.au
Cindy Turner
Tanja
Release the review
SIR,
We can only wonder why the continual delay in the release of the review into maternity services in the Bega Valley.
What is in the report that’s being kept from us?
Let’s get our heads out of the sand and get on with providing maternity services that our women deserve.
Safe care, birthing choices and being able to birth and recover in one facility should be standard practice and they are currently not.
As well as unnecessary stress on local families, I can only imagine the stress this is causing to the excellent midwifery and obstetric staff in the area.
We risk losing these people if their jobs continue to be treated with such disrespect.
Vickie Williamson
Bega.
The doctor’s case
SIR,
I would like to comment on the article about Obstetric Closure in the Bega District News (23/9).
Much of what Dr Khouri says is true.
None of us are happy with a service that requires closure of a unit and patient transfers back and forth.
I do not think any serious risk has occurred to any patient in the last 20 months however it is clearly disruptive to staff and patients.
The problem has been made worse by the lack of consistency in staffing and rostering problems within Pambula.
In the month prior to the closure of Pambula the service was constantly disrupted at short notice due to inefficient rostering of nurses.
The problem of lack of obstetric medical staff in Bega exists and recruitment of a resident specialist or procedural GP obstetrician is not easy.
Currently we have a string of locums working 24 hours a day every day for probably large remuneration.
The locums have no connection with the area, are not known to the local GPs or to the pregnant women.
In some cases they have not been happy to care for unwell neonates - an important task of our GP obstetricians as no local paediatrician exists.
The health service has not even been able to give local GP obstetricians a list of the locums names, contact details or qualifications so we could hand over any particular problems in a timely manner.
Patients are to take on trust that they are appropriately skilled from an area health service who has a poor track record in employing obstetricians.
This is not ideal.
Some of my patients have considered going elsewhere (where they will know who the doctor might be) to deliver their babies due to this unsatisfactory situation.
The prospect of a new hospital is looking less likely with the NSW government’s financial situation, the cheapest option identified in the past was to maintain both hospitals functioning.
If we do get a new hospital the difficulty to recruit specialist staff to Bega in obstetrics and gynaecology and orthopaedics is another argument to locate a new hospital an even distance from all the currently available staff and the population the hospital will primarily serve - ie in the Wolumla area.
We are not a group of “disgruntled doctors” we are four committed professionals who maintain special skills and wish to use them.
We have been contracted by the Area Health Service, and supported in many ways by both levels of government to maintain our skills and yet the GSAHS has let the Pambula hospital staffing run down so much rosters cannot easily be maintained.
Pambula has had a safe local maternity unit for over a hundred years and the population is growing it must be possible to maintain the service if the political will exists.
Dr Janet Watterson
Pambula